The number 1 issue global Wall Street Clinton/Obama neo-liberals pretending Affordable Care Act had any intentions of protecting public health access for 99% of people is the HEALTH INSURANCE CORPORATIONS. These several years of course have seen health care insurance rates SOAR---HITTING PARTICULAR INDUSTRIES FIRST. If we remember the deregulation of energy---California had soaring electricity costs because its newly privatized public utilities openly went wild on rates. What happened? Almost all small and regional businesses were pushed out of business----same tactic was used when global oil was deregulated and openly allowed to treat gas prices as ATM'S creating the 1970s gas lines. This pushed more small and regional transportation businesses out of business---

So, here we are these few decades later watching the EXACT SAME POLICIES doing the same thing this time health insurance killing small and regional health corporations---what is left of our public hospitals and clinics----and killing a once perfectly functioning health insurance structure in US.

Health insurance corporations were able to do this because AFFORDABLE CARE ACT deregulated health care and insurance industry was placed at the top of control of CONSOLIDATED, MONOPOLIZED global health systems.....ergo, they can now do anything they want and pick winners and losers. So, of course corporations are going to end their health packages and go to PREVENTATIVE CARE ONLY.

THIS WAS INSTALLED DURING OBAMA BY CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS---IT IS TAKING HOLD NOW UNDER TRUMP---

Don't feel sorry for corporations over these costs----global corporations paid CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA pols to install this right wing global Wall Street health policy---AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.



FIX IT 2016 “Healthcare at the Tipping Point”
Richard Master is the founder and owner of MCS Industries, a world leader in the picture frame and decorative mirror business. Like most US companies, he fac...
youtube.com


Published on Jun 11, 2016
Richard Master is the founder and owner of MCS Industries, a world leader in the picture frame and decorative mirror business. Like most US companies, he faces relentless annual cost increases to provide health insurance for his employees.

He decided to tackle the problem of healthcare using best business practices... doing an in-depth analysis, finding the right diagnosis and then determining the fix. Fix It, the movie, is a result of his journey to find a solution to the dysfunctional US healthcare system.

...a powerful new documentary that reaches across the political and ideological divide to expand support for major healthcare reform.

The film was two years in the making, with more than forty voices advocating for reform, including: activists, health policy experts, economists, physicians, nurses, patients, business and labor leaders. This documentary takes an in-depth look into how our dysfunctional health care system is damaging our economy, suffocating our businesses, discouraging physicians and negatively impacting on the nation's health, while remaining un-affordable for a third of our citizens.
--
Produced: 2016, Episode:FIXIT, Category: Education, 58:00

_____________________________________________
Since we KNOW URBAN INSTITUTE is a global Wall Street 1% organization we can look at articles and goals written by them and know they will be bad for WE THE PEOPLE THE 99%.  These are far-right wing think tanks so they are not helping us keep our strong, accessible, affordable, American health care.  They will create TALKING POINTS that will send those pesky 5% global Wall Street player organizations out to sell especially poor communities ----THIS WILL HELP THE POOR ACCESS HEALTH CARE. 

MEDICARE AND MEDICAID ended with AFFORDABLE CARE ACT----it was gutted of $1 trillion in budget those cuts hitting hardest in just a few years by OBAMA AND CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS----not TRUMP.

It is DISINGENUOUS to keep suggesting MEDICAID be expanded when we have $20 TRILLION IN NATIONAL DEBT AND A COLLAPSING ECONOMY----so this is all SMOKE AND MIRRORS confusing our working class and  poor citizens which of course is now 80% of Americans and rising.


'A central problem is that 19 states have yet to take advantage of the ACA’s Medicaid eligibility expansion, and that leaves many low-income people in those states without an option for affordable coverage. We suggest allowing states to expand Medicaid eligibility for those with incomes up to 100 percent of the federal poverty, level instead of 138 percent, to encourage more states to expand'.

The first thing we notice in this article is the reference to MEDICARE ADVANTAGE as a model-----MEDICARE ADVANTAGE is the privatized MEDICARE---not our Federal public trust filled with decades of PAYROLL TAX MEDICAL SAVINGS ACCOUNTS.  This is how we know it is a right wing group working against WE THE PEOPLE THE 99%.

Blumberg is frequently asked to testify before Congress and is quoted in major media outlets on health reform topics. She serves on the Cancer Policy Institute’s Advisory Board and has served on the Health Affairs editorial board. From 1993 through 1994 she was a health policy advisor to the Clinton administration during its health care reform effort, and she was a 1996 Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy.
She received her PhD in economics from the University of Michigan.
'The Fulbright Program is administered by cooperating organizations like the Institute of International Education.
James William Fulbright (April 9, 1905 – February 9, 1995) was a United States Senator representing Arkansas from January 1945 until his resignation in December 1974. Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee'.

All of Linda Blumberg's connections is with CLINTON ERA AND INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT TRUSTS. This is how we know her solutions will be ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE and not WE THE PEOPLE THE 99%.  HERE IS ARKANSAS GALORE WITH CLINTON AND FULBRIGHT.

HILLARY WAS TRYING TO DO TO HEALTH CARE BACK THEN WHAT BILL WAS DOING TO DEREGULATED AND GLOBAL WALL STREET.......Blumberg wanted to join Hillary in doing this----fast forward these few decades and VOILA---OBAMA does to health care what Bill did to Wall Street banking.



Urban Wire Health and Health PolicyRSS
The voices of Urban Institute's researchers and staff
July 6, 2017

Robert Abare


Linda J. Blumberg


Fixing the ACA is the overlooked solution to the health care puzzle


Linda Blumberg, senior fellow in the Urban Institute’s Health Policy Center, is an expert on private health insurance and health system reform. She has conducted extensive studies on the impacts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on families and communities across the country following the law’s initial implementation in 2014.
In January 2017, Blumberg and Institute fellow John Holahan proposed strategies to fix the biggest problems with the ACA, rather than repealing and replacing the law as sought by the Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) passed by the House in May and the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA) under debate in the Senate.
What, by your estimation, is the ACA’s primary weakness?

A central problem is that 19 states have yet to take advantage of the ACA’s Medicaid eligibility expansion, and that leaves many low-income people in those states without an option for affordable coverage. We suggest allowing states to expand Medicaid eligibility for those with incomes up to 100 percent of the federal poverty, level instead of 138 percent, to encourage more states to expand.


Second, the nongroup insurance reforms of the ACA have faced real challenges in regions that are sparsely populated. These areas have little competition in their insurance markets, health care provider markets, or both. It’s difficult to engender new competition in these areas.


In areas that experience a lot of consolidation among insurers or providers, unsubsidized premiums are high. In markets with only one or two insurers, there is little to no incentive for insurers to be tough negotiators to bring down provider prices (and thus premiums), and in markets with a dominant health care system, even strong insurers do not have bargaining power to bring provider prices down. These situations are most common in rural and other areas with low population density.

Rising premiums have been a primary concern among critics of the ACA. How do you propose lowering them?

First, in many areas of the country, particularly large metropolitan areas where lots of people live, premiums have been low, as has premium growth. The areas of concern are largely outside these population centers. Concerns over whether insurers will be reimbursed for the cost-sharing subsidies they have paid out and are required to pay out in the future is now affecting how insurers set premiums, however, and this uncertainty can be immediately addressed by Congress and the administration committing to pay these bills.    


In addition to that immediate need, we suggest that insurer and provider consolidation and the higher premiums that result from them can be addressed using a strategy employed by the Medicare Advantage program. We propose that provider payment rates charged by nongroup insurers be capped at Medicare rates, Medicare rates plus some percentage, or at some other standard.

These caps would allow insurers to negotiate lower rates with providers if they can, but these insurers would not have to pay more. The caps would take away the pricing power of provider monopolies, allowing insurers to set lower premiums. The caps would also make it easier for additional insurers to enter markets with only one or two insurers because the new entrants could set competitive premiums even in markets where they currently have no market share.


How does “fixing” the ACA differ from the other options on the table? Could the AHCA and BCRA be described as fixing the ACA?Fixing the ACA requires addressing existing problems such that the ACA’s objectives can better be achieved. An approach that does not share the ACA’s objectives is not a fix.

The ACA’s objectives were primarily to do the following:

• Expand insurance coverage.
• Increase access to and affordability of necessary medical care.
• Broaden the way risk is shared in insurance markets, eliminating price and coverage discrimination by health status. The goal was to have the large number of people who are healthy at a given time more broadly contribute to the costs of care for the smaller number of people who have health problems at a given time, thus providing affordable access to necessary care. In addition, competition based on quality and efficiency could be engendered in such an environment, replacing the competition for the healthiest enrollees that dominated insurance markets before reform.

The BCRA and AHCA have different objectives.

They would increase the number of uninsured people and would decrease access to care and affordability via decreasing Medicaid funding, eliminating the ACA’s subsidies to lower deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs, and decreasing premium tax credits for many low- and middle-income people purchasing private nongroup insurance today.


Various strategies in the bills would move private insurance markets back toward separating the costs of the healthy from those of the sick, making access to care less affordable when health issues arise. And we estimate that the BCRA would lead to 24.7 million more people uninsured than under the ACA in 2022. The AHCA would lead to an additional 23 million uninsured in 2022.


With such different objectives and outcomes, neither piece of legislation can be considered a fix to the ACA.
The individual mandate is one of the most unpopular provisions in the ACA. Do you have a fix for that?The individual mandate, though unpopular, is critical. It broadens health care risk by keeping healthy people in the insurance market and attracting more healthy people to enroll.


But it’s difficult to find an alternative to the individual mandate that is equally effective and fair.
In our “fix it” paper, we discussed using late-enrollment penalties, but this strategy has significant downsides relative to the individual mandate. The AHCA proposes a 30 percent premium surcharge for late enrollees. But only people who expect to need substantial amounts of medical care in the coming year are going to be willing to pay that extra 30 percent in addition to their regular premium.


People who experienced a gap in coverage but expect to be healthy would be less likely to enroll because of the higher price. So, that 30 percent penalty would make the insurance pool sicker, on average, and drive premiums up.
This shows that it’s not straightforward to find an alternative to the individual mandate that doesn’t dissuade healthy people from getting insured or make it prohibitively expensive for people who need care to enroll after a coverage gap.


And people’s lives are complicated—difficult situations lead many to experience these gaps. We want to encourage people to get and stay covered, but we should be careful about being overly punitive in a way that will compromise the health of people who have gone through tough times.



What are the most important steps for fixing problems with the ACA?

First, Congress and the administration should commit to fully reimbursing Marketplace insurers for the cost-sharing reductions these insurers have paid and will pay out in the future.


Next, a permanent reinsurance program for the private nongroup insurance market would address markets experiencing disproportionate enrollment of people with high medical needs. The ACA, AHCA, and BCRA include temporary reinsurance programs while Medicare has a permanent one, so there should be bipartisan support for this.

Third, capping provider payment rates for nongroup insurers, at least in low insurer or provider competition areas, should help a great deal.  


Enrollment could be improved in several ways, some less costly than others. Increasing outreach and enrollment assistance is an inexpensive way to get more healthy people to join the insurance market. Uninsured people reached by such programs are more likely to be healthy because they haven’t entered the system on their own knowing that they need care.


Closing loopholes for insurers to sell plans that do not comply with the ACA’s consumer protections would also bring more healthy people into the broad insurance pool, which would help bring average premiums down.


Other important fixes come with a bigger price tag, but even those would represent a small percentage increase in overall health spending.
The ACA has made major advances in making health care affordable through Medicaid expansion, premium tax credits, and cost-sharing reductions for nongroup insurance coverage. But as people go up the income scale and federal assistance decreases, there are people who still look at the cost of insurance and feel that coverage is not affordable or the cost-sharing requirements are too high for their income.


We can do better by improving the premium tax credits and cost-sharing assistance and by encouraging states that have not expanded Medicaid eligibility to do so.

_____________________________________________

'When President-elect Donald Trump enters office on Jan. 20, he will inherit almost $20 trillion of national debt. This debt is a threat to the American economy, and its key driver—unsustainable spending—must be controlled'.

Here it is-----all US Treasury debt -----Wall Street bailouts in trillions ----global corporate development subsidies in trillions----THIS IS WHAT KILLED MEDICARE AND MEDICAID TRUSTS. Of course these same 5% to the 1% Clinton/Obama pols and players are now PRETENDING it is all Trump's fault.

WE THE PEOPLE must know goals in health policy----global Wall Street goal of killing all of MLK'S WAR ON POVERTY would kill MEDICARE AND MEDICAID.


When a LINDA BLUMBERG continues to talk about expanded Medicaid blaming it on states that OPT OUT----she knows she is POSING LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE.......it ain't happening because it was never supposed to happen.

Entitlements are absorbing all taxes because of health industry PROFITEERING AND FRAUD---and because corporations and the rich stopped paying taxes these few decades ago.

3 Things Trump Can Do to Control the National Debt

Mollie McNeill / @molliemcneill / January 11, 2017 /

The U.S. national debt is racing toward $20 trillion. (Photo: iStock Photos)


Commentary ByMollie McNeill @molliemcneill


Mollie McNeill is a research assistant with economic and budget policy at The Heritage Foundation.
When President-elect Donald Trump enters office on Jan. 20, he will inherit almost $20 trillion of national debt. This debt is a threat to the American economy, and its key driver—unsustainable spending—must be controlled.


Come Jan. 20, the new administration should act immediately to tame the federal budget and reduce the national debt. Here are three solutions from The Heritage Foundation’s Blueprint Series that do just that.
1. Reform autopilot entitlement programs.


Entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security make up the largest portion of the federal budget. In 2015, major entitlement programs consumed 52 percent of all tax dollars. They will grow to consume even more of the budget unless lawmakers intervene.


Currently, entitlement programs run on autopilot, meaning they don’t require new spending bills to keep running. Because of laws put in place years ago, agencies spend whatever is necessary each year to fund these programs, and it is politically unpopular for politicians to reform or downsize them.


The next administration should reform these unsustainable mandatory programs. Some commonsense solutions include repealing and replacing Obamacare, modernizing Medicare, capping the federal allotment for Medicaid, and making reforms to Social Security.


Entitlements Devour All Taxes by 2038


2. Balance the budget.



Persistent budget deficits allow the national debt to spiral out of control. For the last 50 years, the federal budget had an average deficit of 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, and the current Congressional Budget Office baseline projects that deficits will surpass $1 trillion before the end of the decade.


Balancing the budget isn’t a cure all, since legislators can always use higher taxes to support higher spending and technically balance the budget in the short term. In the long run, higher taxes would end up chasing ever higher spending, which is unsustainable. Instead, a balanced budget is an important goal to prioritize spending and reduce deficits and debt.


The incoming administration should adopt a plan that balances the budget while reducing spending and taxes. The Heritage Foundation’s “Blueprint for Balance” balances the budget in six years and creates a surplus in seven years.


How to Balance the Budget


3. Reform the budget process.


The current budget process is broken. The budget process is supposed to enable lawmakers to set national priorities in a timely and predictable way. But the current process, established in 1974, has only worked four times.


The current process leads to higher government spending and debt. Since the most expensive programs, like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid grow on autopilot, and because they are also the most popular, politicians have little incentive to change them.
The next administration must enact budget process reforms that restore accountability and fiscal responsibility to the federal budget.


Commonsense budget process reforms such as fair value accounting, including interest in estimating the impact of congressional budget proposals, and statutory spending caps that limit spending growth enforced by sequestration, will help reform the budget process and get national debt under control.


How the Budget Has Changed


So far, the new administration’s plans for addressing the national debt haven’t been great. Trump has proposed renegotiating the national debt and printing more money. Both are possible, but will ultimately prove to be unhelpful and economically dangerous distractions from the out-of-control spending that is driving the national debt.


Despite the lack of concrete current plans to control the debt, the next administration will have ample opportunity to tame the federal budget. Trump’s pick for Office of Management and Budget director, Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., is a budget hawk who values fiscal conservatism.


The Congress is controlled by Republicans who have put forth sensible and realistic proposals to reduce out-of-control health spending with Medicare premium support and caps on federal Medicaid allotments. With the House, Senate, and executive all controlled by the same party, serious budget reform is within reach.
The incoming administration needs a plan to get spending and high national debt under control now, to ensure economic freedom and secure prosperity for Americans in the future.
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When a global Wall Street Clinton/Obama health care group have us shouting MEDICARE FOR ALL-----they are again MISINFORMING PEOPLE.  These groups are not working to reinstate our American Federal Medicare Trust into which citizens have paid for several decades---they are talking, as was BLUMBERG----about this MEDICARE ADVANTAGE that OBAMA strengthened while weakening and ending our Federal Medicare Trust.

Having MEDICARE ADVANTAGE speaking for what is good for 99% of citizens is like having AARP speaking for what is good for 99% of citizens---AARP is MEDICARE ADVANTAGE----this corporations' goal these few decades has been just that ---PRIVATIZING MEDICARE.  We have what are global corporations allowed to pretend to advocate for what is good for 99% of American people.

Our Federal government was captured by global Wall Street so these FEDERAL MEDICARE AND MEDICAID TRUSTS have not been corrupted as is----now global Wall Street is simply handing us to corporations pretending they are advocates for our good.


'Rising premiums have been a primary concern among critics of the ACA. How do you propose lowering them?

'In addition to that immediate need, we suggest that insurer and provider consolidation and the higher premiums that result from them can be addressed using a strategy employed by the Medicare Advantage program.   We propose that provider payment rates charged by nongroup insurers be capped at Medicare rates, Medicare rates plus some percentage, or at some other standard'.

For those not understanding HEALTH INSURANCE TALK----the buzz words from MS BLUMBERG and this article are now PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE IN NON-GROUP OR INDIVIDUAL MARKET under Affordable Care Act.  All that was done was to create TIERED HEALTH INSURANCE plans pretending non-group individual health plans are abiding by AFFORDABLE CARE ACT with what people wanted to hear----when in fact they are not.   This strips 80% of Americans from the national and global health corporation market and now they are installing these same TAX CREDITS----VOUCHERS----replacing what was a national MEDICARE AND MEDICAID program where everyone received the same and could go anywhere to get that health care.

What happens in every industry regarding the receipt of tax credits for services? That's right ----the entire tax credit funding system is corrupted and used to enrich those NON-GROUP health insurance corporations with citizens not accessing what is Federally mandated because no federal agency is providing oversight and accountability. The non-groups in Maryland are largely tied to global corporations like Johns Hopkins.



Blog


Challenges in Estimating the Number of People With Nongroup Health Insurance Coverage Under Proposals for Refundable Tax Credits



Posted by Susan Yeh Beyer and Jared Maeda on
December 20, 2016

Some policymakers have expressed interest in developing proposals to replace the current tax-based subsidies for the purchase of private health insurance in the nongroup (or individual) market under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with refundable tax credits that would be structured differently from those under current law. Many such proposals would also eliminate or reduce the extent of current federal laws regulating the nongroup market, particularly the rules governing health insurance benefits. Two key questions for policymakers in developing such proposals are what type of insurance products would qualify for tax credits and what role states would have in making that determination.
CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) anticipate that insurers would respond to such legislation by offering new types of insurance products in the nongroup market, which are likely to differ from existing products in their depth and extent of health insurance benefits.


If there were no clear definition of what type of insurance product people could use their tax credit to purchase, some of those insurance products would probably not provide enough financial protection against high medical costs to meet the broad definition of coverage that CBO and JCT have typically used in the past—that is, a comprehensive major medical policy that, at a minimum, covers high-cost medical events and various services, including those provided by physicians and hospitals. (For a discussion about how CBO defines health insurance coverage, see CBO’s blog post on how CBO defines and estimates coverage.)



If there were no clear definition of what type of insurance product people could use their tax credit to purchase, everyone who received the tax credit would have access to some limited set of health care services, at a minimum, but not everyone would have insurance coverage that offered financial protection against a high-cost or catastrophic medical event; CBO and JCT would not count those people with limited health benefits as having coverage. One could thus assess the effects of such proposals on insurance coverage in two different ways—how many people would obtain any type of insurance policy using the tax credit and how many people would obtain an insurance policy that meets the broad definition of coverage described above. If policymakers expressed interest in knowing the number of people who, under those proposals, would purchase private insurance in the nongroup market that met a broad definition of coverage, CBO and JCT would estimate separately the number of people who would receive the tax credits and the number of people who would obtain such coverage. In this blog post, we describe the challenges CBO and JCT would face in estimating the number of people who would purchase coverage in the nongroup market, and the scope of that coverage, under such proposals. (Similar challenges could arise in the group market if tax credits were extended to people with employment-based coverage. However, that discussion is beyond the scope of this blog.) For context, we first provide some background about private insurance and summarize how the nongroup market is regulated under current law, including the changes that were made by the ACA. (For additional information about that market, see CBO’s report about private health insurance premiums.)


What Features of Private Insurance Determine the Share of Medical Costs It Covers?



The amount of financial protection against medical costs that private insurance covers can be described in terms of the depth and extent of coverage. (Another dimension by which private insurance coverage can vary is the size of the provider network. However, that discussion is beyond the scope of this blog post.)




The depth of coverage can be measured by examining the cost-sharing structure and any maximum benefits or limits that apply. The cost-sharing structure is the amount of out-of-pocket costs—typically in the form of deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments—that a person is required to pay when using medical services. Those out-of-pocket costs may be subject to a maximum limit (in a given year or over a lifetime) beyond which the insurer covers most or all remaining medical costs. Another limit may apply to the maximum dollar amount of medical costs that an insurer will pay for. When benefits reach their maximum allowed by the plan, the person is responsible for all remaining medical costs. In general, plans have only one of those two limits (or none at all).
The actuarial value of a health insurance plan is a summary measure of the depth of coverage for a given set of health care benefits. More specifically, the actuarial value measures the percentage of medical costs that an insurer would pay if it covered people with average health expenditures. For example, a plan with an actuarial value of 70 percent would, on average, pay 70 percent of the expected medical costs on covered benefits for a person with average health risks and patterns of use.




The extent of coverage can be measured by examining the scope of benefits—that is, the services and the types of providers whose services are covered by a health plan. Covered benefits for most plans include physicians’ and hospitals’ services and often laboratory services, radiology services, and prescription drugs. More extensive plans cover a broader range of services, such as behavioral health and substance abuse treatment and rehabilitative therapy. Less extensive plans limit the range of services covered and might exclude maternity benefits and prescription drugs.


How Is the Nongroup Market Regulated Under Current Law?




States have traditionally been responsible for regulating health insurance benefits in the nongroup market. Before enactment of the ACA, nongroup market regulations varied widely across states. In 2014, however, many federal regulations that governed the benefits that new policies sold in the nongroup market must provide went into effect as part of the ACA. The depth and extent of coverage in the nongroup market were standardized to a large degree under the ACA, which established a set of “essential health benefits” and a minimum actuarial value for insurance plans (along with a definition of that measure). In addition, plans sold in the nongroup market were no longer allowed to set maximum annual or lifetime limits on covered medical costs for the essential health benefits. The states’ role in defining the depth and extent of coverage in the nongroup market was, thus, substantially reduced after 2014.




The ACA also established several regulations that limit insurers’ ability to deny coverage to people with high expected medical costs. Three regulations, in particular, apply to such people: modified community rating rules, guaranteed issue, and requiring coverage of preexisting conditions. Modified community rating rules prohibit insurers from engaging in medical underwriting (pricing premiums on the basis of a person’s health) and limit the degree to which premiums are allowed to vary by age. Under guaranteed issue, insurers are required to sell coverage to a person regardless of his or her health. The prohibition on excluding coverage of preexisting conditions requires nongroup insurers to cover the treatment of those conditions.


What Are Some Alternative Proposals to the Current Tax-Based Subsidies to Purchase Private Insurance in the Nongroup Market?




Currently, tax credits for nongroup policies sold through the ACA marketplaces vary in relation to the premium of the second-lowest-cost “silver” plan in a market that offers the policies and in relation to certain characteristics of enrollees, including family size, income, age, and tobacco use. To qualify for tax credits under current law, a person must purchase a plan offered through a health insurance marketplace that covers 10 categories of benefits defined as essential and meets a minimum actuarial value, among other features. In addition, cost-sharing subsidies reduce the cost-sharing amounts for low-income people who select a silver plan.



Some policymakers want to replace the current tax-based subsidies to purchase private insurance in the nongroup market with alternative proposals. Under some proposals, refundable tax credits would generally be based on a fixed dollar amount and might vary by age or family size. The amount of such credits often does not depend on an enrollee’s income or a plan’s premium. A key question for federal policymakers is what types of insurance products would qualify for the tax credits. Often, such proposals would allow states to regulate the nongroup market. In that case, regulation of the nongroup market would probably vary widely from state to state. Without a federal standard, some states might not impose any regulations that would govern the depth and extent of coverage and that would define what insurance products qualify for tax credits.


What Are the Challenges of Estimating the Number of People With Nongroup Coverage Under an Alternative Refundable Tax Credit Proposal?


CBO and JCT face several challenges in estimating the number of people who would purchase private insurance coverage in the nongroup market under an alternative refundable tax credit proposal. It is difficult to predict what regulations states would impose on the nongroup market, what types of products insurers might offer given those regulations, and which types of insurance products people might purchase based on their preferences and their characteristics (such as age, income, and health).




One way to predict the types of plans that people might purchase is to look at the types of plans that existed in the nongroup market before enactment of the ACA. Before then, nongroup market regulations varied widely across states. Only a few states required guaranteed issue and implemented modified community rating rules. Although many states specified a set of services that insurers had to cover, no states regulated the depth of coverage or the amount of cost sharing. Most plans sold in the nongroup market included major medical benefits that provided comprehensive coverage for a range of services, including care by physicians and at hospitals. But certain services, such as maternity benefits and prescription drugs, were not always covered. Many of those plans also had very high deductibles and maximum annual or lifetime limits on benefits. Nevertheless, many of them would meet the broad definition of coverage that CBO and JCT have typically used in the past.



Other plans that were less commonly sold offered benefits that were even more limited. Such plans included fixed-dollar indemnity plans that paid a certain amount per day for illness or hospitalization, or plans that covered only preventive care and routine office-based physicians’ services but did not cover hospitalizations. Such limited plans would generally not meet the broad definition of coverage.



Looking back at the pre-ACA nongroup market is not enough to determine what might happen under a tax credit proposal, however, because no such financial incentive to purchase health insurance existed in that market. Plans that were previously offered in that market might be offered again in the future, and new products might also be offered. In the absence of a clear definition of what type of plan qualifies for a tax credit, some plans would probably have premiums that covered minimal services and would be priced close to the amount of the tax credit. Such plans have been offered in the past in response to a similar incentive: They were used in conjunction with a tax credit related to child health that was in effect in 1992 and 1993, and the depth and extent of coverage that people purchased were often very limited.




In addition to the response by states and insurers, people at different income levels might have different preferences for the depth and extent of their insurance coverage. For example, low-income people might prefer coverage for preventive services and routine physicians’ visits to keep their monthly expenses low, even if such a policy did not cover more costly services such as hospital care. High-income people might not care as much about predictable monthly expenses and might prefer catastrophic coverage to protect their assets against high medical costs.




People’s preferences for insurance products might also vary with other characteristics, such as their sex or health. In states without regulations that limit insurers’ ability to exclude people with high expected medical costs, however, those individuals would probably face high premiums or have access to insurance plans with only limited coverage.


In response to a future policy that had minimal federal or state regulations, CBO and JCT expect that some new insurance products would be offered that limited coverage to the amount of the tax credit. Some of those insurance products purchased by people using a tax credit would probably not offer much financial protection against high out-of-pocket costs. Depending on the size of the tax credit, however, the depth and extent of coverage and the premiums of plans could vary. As discussed in another blog post about how CBO defines and estimates coverage, CBO does not count plans that have very limited benefits in measuring the extent of private insurance coverage; in such an assessment, it counts only people with a comprehensive major medical policy as having private insurance.



Under such proposals, CBO and JCT would separately estimate the number of people who would receive the tax credits and, if policymakers expressed interest in such estimates, the number of people who would purchase private insurance in the nongroup market that met a broad definition of coverage. In that case, the latter estimate of the number of people with coverage would probably be smaller than the estimate of the number of people who would receive the tax credit.

_____________________________________________
Below we see from where these Affordable Care Act policies stem----again, Bush era 2000 right wing global corporate think tank HEALTH INSURANCE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA---which of course was the strongest corporate health insurance lobbyist for AFFORDABLE CARE ACT.

If we don't like this health reform it is because it was written by these corporate groups----they all have talking points that begin----STRATEGIES FOR WORKING AMERICANS----



'Richard E. Curtis
President

Institute for Health Policy
Employment History
Director of Policy and Research
Health Insurance Association of America'



This is only the start of a very long health policy article----if you want to know from where Affordable Care Act comes ---this is it----tied to MASSACHUSETTS' ROMNEYCARE-----For those not noticing yet MA is raging far-right wing global Wall Street 1%---not DEMOCRATS. So, now that no one can afford all these tiered health plans we all need tax credits to get what we simply received through corporate and government health plans.

'Starting up a pool would be considered a “charitable purpose,” so that pools could
more easily obtain foundation grants to pay for start-up and administrative costs'.

This is essentially ending our FEDERAL AND STATE health plans and EXPOSING WE THE PEOPLE to yet more FOUNDATION AND CORPORATE PATRONAGE in lieu of their paying taxes-----when they DONATE they write the conditions of what that health programs looks like and who dispenses that program----just as with our social services where most of these few decades of massive frauds took place. This is supposed to be our health care PLAN.

If we notice we are still paying those PAYROLL TAXES supposedly creating health savings accounts and clinical care when needed---yet all this is moving towards CHARITY PATRONAGE with those corporations receiving tax credits.

We keep allowing far-right wing pretend to be helping the poor-----stay in office CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----



PRIVATE PURCHASING POOLS TO HARNESS INDIVIDUAL TAX CREDITS FOR CONSUMERS


Richard E. Curtis, Edward
Neuschler, and Rafe Forland
Institute for Health Policy Solutions
December 2000
Strategies to Expand Health Insurance for Working Americans
A Report Series from The Commonwealth Fund Task Force on the Future of Health Insurance



v
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY


A health insurance tax credit could help many people who cannot afford to
purchase coverage. However, even with these subsidies, many of the uninsured would
probably still find non-group private insurance too expensive. Many would also find the
complexities of the individual market and its myriad insurance products bewildering.



Private purchasing pools for tax-credit recipients could address these problems by
providing individual purchasers with many of the advantages of a group market, such as
relatively low administrative costs, no health rating and professional purchasing expertise.
Insurance purchased through pools should cost 5 percent to 10 percent less than private,
non-group insurance. Unlike many employer plans, however, purchasing pools will allow
individuals to choose among several health plans.



All tax-credit recipients would be required to purchase coverage through private
purchasing pools. This requirement is necessary to ensure that the pools become large
enough to operate efficiently and offer their members the advantages of group purchasing.
Individual purchasers who were not eligible for tax credits, and firms with 50 or fewer
employees could also join the pools. Income-eligible workers in small firms with a majority
of low-wage workers would be eligible for the full amount of the tax credit for coverage
purchased through a pool, whether or not their employer paid any part of their premium.




In the recent past, many small state-run purchasing pools have failed, largely
because of hostility from insurers and agents. Agents fear loss of commissions, and health
plans prefer to deal with employer groups directly through exclusive contracts. However,
the pools proposed here should be more attractive to insurers. Because pools would be the
only vehicle for using the health insurance tax credit, they would be much larger and have
greater cohesion and stability than any other pools to date. In addition, since people will
join pools for reasons not related to their health status, risk selection should be much less
frequent than in the individual insurance market.



In turn, pools should be attractive to low-income purchasers of health insurance,
because they would provide a more consumer-friendly source of coverage than the
existing individual health insurance market. Like large employers, pools would act as
“sponsors,” using their size and professional purchasing expertise to obtain good value for
their members. Individual consumers would be assured that the plans offered through the
pool were those that best met the informed standards of their sponsor, the pool.


Premiums for full tax-credit recipients would not vary based on individual health
status. They would be permitted to vary only by age, and only to the extent permitted in
the state’s regular insurance market. Premiums for non-tax-credit recipients could be health
rated, and health rating could be phased in for recipients of partial credits. More generally,
these pools would provide a stable source of coverage for people whose circumstances
change, allowing them to keep their insurance provider and their physicians.



The federal government would provide the enabling legislation and start-up funds
for health insurance purchasing pools, so that at least one competing pool would be available
in every region of the United States. Federal funds would cover 80 percent of the cost of
establishing a pool, up to $2 million per pool. Thereafter, administrative costs would be
paid for with a small (3%–4%) surcharge on premiums. State responsibilities would include
regulating pools, preventing “redlining,” limiting the number of pools so they reach
sufficient size, and arranging an alternative purchasing mechanism for tax-credit recipients
if no private organization came forward to sponsor a pool in the state. Where necessary,
state benefit mandates would be waived, so that plans costing no more than the value of
the tax credit could be offered through pools. However, a federal minimum benefit package
would be established. Pools would be permitted to contract selectively with health plans.



In each region of the United States, several competing pools would be preferable
to just one, for several reasons. First of all, people prefer to have a choice of plans, and
presumably a choice of pools. More importantly, a single purchasing pool, especially one
seen to be an agent of government, might not have the same freedom to contract
selectively with the health plans it considers the best value.



Starting up a pool would be considered a “charitable purpose,” so that pools could
more easily obtain foundation grants to pay for start-up and administrative costs. Their
boards of directors would represent employers and consumers, not insurance vendors or
health care providers. Pools would negotiate with health plans, and would provide easy
ways to enroll. The pools would receive tax credits and pay premiums, and would serve as
an ombudsman for participants. Pools would be required to offer at least three different
health plans and at least one coverage option that cost no more than the maximum tax
credit, and pools could refuse to contract with plans that are deemed too expensive or that
offer poor benefits. Pools must be open to all tax-credit recipients.


The tax credits would be payable in advance, based on an individual’s tax return
from the previous year or expected income for the current year. Overpayments and
underpayments would be adjusted through a reconciliation process at the end of the year.
Employers would use payroll deductions to obtain the employee’s share of the premiums,
when required, and send them to the pools.


_______________________________________________
Most citizens understand that BRONZE has so high a deductible and co-pay that the goal was making it too hard for WE THE PEOPLE the 99% to access health care----this is what is called MAKING HEALTH CARE MORE AFFORDABLE----affordable to global corporations and global Wall Street---not you and I.

National news back in 2014 made it sound as if lots of Americans were getting those SILVER, GOLD, AND PLATINUM PLANS----well, below we see a temporary subsidy for the poor allowing them in the short term to access a higher plan until that subsidy disappears which will occur not long after this coming economic crash.  So, the stats were rigged to show more Americans able to access a higher SILVER PLAN.  They will be back on gutted of funding UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSAL CARE MEDICAID FOR ALL----preventative care only.

I hear in Baltimore citizens thinking they have a SILVER PLAN because they received that subsidy-----all this is designed to keep WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% from mass protest ----



'In addition, cost-sharing subsidies reduce the cost-sharing amounts for low-income people who select a silver plan'.

Silver plans by far the most popular insurance option

Kelly Kennedy, USA TODAY Published 2:16 p.m. ET May 1, 2014 | Updated 5:45 p.m. ET May 1, 2014(Photo: Pablo Alcala, AP)

WASHINGTON — Almost two-thirds of the 8 million Americans who enrolled in health insurance through the Affordable Care Act picked mid-range "silver" plans, according to new data on sign-ups released Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services Department.



The type of plans selected by those choosing private insurance, as well as the new customers' demographics, were key parts of the latest HHS report, which covers the entire open-enrollment period for the law.



Silver plans cover 70% of health costs, leaving the consumer responsible for the rest. Consumers could choose from bronze, silver, gold or platinum plans, with platinum plans having the highest premium and the lowest out-of-pocket costs for the consumer. About 20% chose bronze, 9% chose gold, 5% chose platinum. Two percent a bare-bones catastrophic care plan. All plans include no out-of-pocket costs for preventive exams, such as yearly physicals or women's annual cancer screenings.



The new data showed that 54% of those enrolling in insurance were women, while 63% of all enrollees were white. Of the remaining enrollees, the HHS report showed, 17% were African American, 11% Hispanic, 8% Asian, 1% multiracial, 0.3% American Indian/Alaska native and 0.1% native Hawaiian/Pacific islander.


Administration officials said they believe they will enroll more Latinos and younger people over the years, as they continue to emphasize their recruiting efforts.
Latino enrollment is "slightly lower" than the number of people qualified to enroll, with about 11% of the 14% of people eligible to enroll actually purchasing a plan, said Myra Alvarez, associate director of the HHS Office of Minority Health. But she said that was to be expected.



The statistics also do not include states with their own exchanges, such as California and New York, where millions of people enrolled in private plans. U.S. Census figures show that about 29% of Hispanic people are uninsured. Often, educating people about the Affordable Care Act and the exchanges also involved educating people about what health insurance is in general, Alvarez said.



One million of the 20 million calls to the HHS call center were in Spanish, said Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
About 20.8 million people are now enrolled in insurance because of the law, said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. That includes those 8 million who enrolled in private insurance, 4.8 million now covered by Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, 5 million who bought coverage outside the state and federal exchanges and 3 million adults younger than 26 now covered through their parents' insurance.



Eighty-five percent of those who enrolled in private health insurance through the state and federal exchanges between Oct. 1 and April 15 received federal subsidies to help pay for it, the HHS report showed. That is similar to figures released earlier by HHS.


The statistics also show that 28% of the 8,019,763 people who selected private health insurance are between the ages of 18 and 34, the age group that insurance analysts believe will help balance out the market's finances.
Thirty-one percent of the 3.8 million who enrolled in March were in the 18-to-34 age group, the latest records show. In the first three months of open enrollment, only 25% of those who enrolled were in that age group.



Officials believe enough younger people have bought insurance to keep premiums stable, said Michael Hash, director of the HHS Office of Health Reform.

There are some who believe the numbers could still go up significantly, particularly from the young and healthy.
Although open enrollment ended March 31, anyone who experiences a major life event may qualify to buy insurance, said Jen Mishory, executive director of the Young Invincibles, a non-profit group urging young people to get coverage. That includes marriage, moving, job changes and aging off parents' plans.




"All of those events are more likely to happen to people younger than 35," Mishory said. "The numbers are high in terms of who could qualify."
For example, Mishory said, about 2.6 million people will turn 26 and no longer be eligible for coverage under their parents' plans.
Enrollment in exchanges not run by the federal or state governments was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be 5 million. On Thursday, eHealth, the nation's largest private health exchange, released quarterly results that showed a 34% increase in individual and family insurance plans.



Brian Mast, an eHealth spokesman, said shopping for insurance on private exchanges has increased significantly.
While the number of people ages 18 to 34 fell from just over 50% last year to 42% this year at eHealth, Mast said it was still "a pretty healthy number." Last year, about 9% of enrollees were ages 55 to 64; this year, it's 16%.
In the first month of open enrollment, Mast said people who were not eligible for federal subsidies rushed to eHealth to buy insurance they probably could not buy before. They also tended to choose bronze plans, unlike the government exchanges where people chose silver plans.



An eHealth survey, Mast said, showed that 44% of its customers were previously uninsured.



WHO PAID PREMIUMS?


Despite the extent of the statistics, HHS still does not know how many people have actually paid their insurance premiums or how many have bought insurance that complies with the law but is outside the federal and state marketplaces.


"We are interested in having reliable and accurate data as much as you are," Bataille said, adding that she doesn't expect to have it until the end of the year.
HHS, however, did cite numerous reports from media organizations and insurance companies that show between 80% and 90% of those who selected plans have paid their premiums.



House Republicans pre-empted the data Tuesday with a report from the Energy and Commerce Committee that says that 67% of enrollees had paid their first month's premium by April 15. Committee members sent letters to every insurer included in the plan and asked for the data. However, the insurers told the committee that people still have time to pay the premium, so committee members will ask for an update by May 20. Committee members nevertheless cited the incomplete data to criticize the law.



"These numbers stand in stark contrast to the White House's previous assertions," said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va. "If President Obama disputes the information provided by the insurance companies, he should direct HHS to immediately release complete enrollment data, including how many people were previously insured."


The House report did not include data from state-run exchanges. California announced that 1,395,929 people had signed up by April 15, well above its initial goal of 580,000, and that about 85% had already paid their premiums.



Though the market officially closed March 31, the federal site and several state sites remained open until April 15 for people who said they had a hard time completing their application by the deadline.


Sebelius announced her resignation last month after the federal exchange reached 7.5 million enrollees, which outpaced estimates. She will remain in the job until her designated successor, Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell, is confirmed by the Senate.
_________________________________________

What we are seeing more and more is this centralization of low-income citizens into health systems separate from all others and this is sold as OFFERING A LOWER COST.  This global health system has no problem handling a lower threshold for some years as all others serving lower income go bankrupt or close----this is marketeering and profiteering folks---it is not strong public health care.

The goal of AFFORDABLE CARE ACT is getting 95% of Americans tied to GLOBAL TELEMEDICINE with our global health systems recruiting health tourists of the global 1% and their 2%----that's the goal so what we are seeing is a change of behavior of US citizens going to any hospital----to going to selected hospitals----to not being able to go to any hospital.  We see in this article it is all about deregulating our strong public health structure that protected all citizens equally----our low-income citizens in US cities that have never installed WAR ON POVERTY PROGRAMS like Baltimore will say----

THAT SHIP SAILED A LONG TIME AGO----but across the US standards were kept high for our low-income health access.


I tell you----all these global Wall Street corporations and pols working so hard to help the poor---it's a wonder they can still earn billions in profits each year and our pols pockets millions in thanks from Wall Street.

Horizon enrolls 234K into controversial new OMNIA plan


Updated on March 12, 2016 at 8:10 AM Posted on March 10, 2016 at 1:23 PM


Images of the Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield headquarters in Newark. About 234,000 people have signed up for the OMNIA health insurance plans, the company announced Thursday. (Matt Smith | For NJ Advance Media)
78 sharesBy Susan K. Livio
slivio@njadvancemedia.com,
NJ Advance Media for NJ.com




TRENTON -- About 234,500 people signed up for the OMNIA line of tiered network health plans offering discounted premiums and low or no copays for patients who use a select group of hospitals and doctors, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey announced Thursday. 


The eagerly-awaited enrollment figures for Horizon's newest and most talked about insurance products show there are about 234,500 OMNIA members, including 41,300 of them who were previously uninsured, according to the company's announcement.
Most of the enrollees -- 189,200 -- bought the policies themselves, including 154,250 through the health exchange created by the landmark health care law, the Affordable Care Act. About another 45,240 people enrolled through their job.



Talk of OMNIA has dominated the health care industry since Horizon announced the discount line of plans in September, and much of that has been criticism leveled by hospital excluded by the preferred "tier 1" network, which offers consumers the greatest amount of savings.



Eighteen hospitals are suing Horizon for breach of contract and defamation for implying their facilities are second-rate.  




Why Horizon has sued these 2 hospitals


When some hospitals brought a lawsuit claiming Horizon's 'Tier 2' designation maligned their reputation, Horizon fired back with a lawsuit of its own.


Many of these Tier 2 facilities are independent, relatively small and serve a large number of Medicaid or uninsured patients, and say the loss of commercially insured people will force them to merge or close.


The enrollment figures come close to the 256,000 members Horizon executives predicted, and are a good indication the company is meeting a need for quality care that costs less, said Robert A. Marino, Horizon's chairman and CEO.


"Affordability has been a barrier for some uninsured individuals and too often lower-priced policies required consumers to trade cost for quality," Marino said. "OMNIA premiums, on average, cost 15 percent less than our non-tiered plans and unlike high-deductible policies, don't require members to incur large out-of-pocket expenses before the insurer pays claims."



"OMNIA is focused on keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they become sick," Marino's statement said.
Steven M. Goldman, attorney for 17 Tier 2 hospitals suing OMNIA and a former Banking and Insurance commissioner, said the people who signed up were not given the full story on OMNIA.



"Since Horizon hasn't disclosed any information about the criteria it used in selecting its OMNIA providers, the only information consumers had available in making their decision was price," Goldman said in a statement. "This is particularly true of the Affordable Care Act enrollees."



"Many of these people may not even have access to a Tier 1 provider in their community or be aware that their trusted hospital has been designated Tier 2, while their long-time doctor has been designated Tier 1, or vice versa," Goldman added. "Horizon has created this confusion in the marketplace by refusing to provide answers of any kind about the plan's selection criteria."



OMNIA members can be found in all of New Jersey's 21 counties, with the greatest concentration in the most populated counties: Bergen (24,248), Middlesex (19,377) and Essex (14,813), according to Horizon.
Health policy experts said the figures show a promising future for OMNIA.



The impact on tier 2 hospitals is unlikely to be felt right away, said Joel Cantor, director of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy.
While Horizon appears to have met their enrollment target, at this level I doubt there will be very substantial impacts on tier two hospitals," Cantor said. "Their data also show that enrollment is spread over all NJ counties, which will mitigate the impact on any single hospital."



"That said, these results are just for the first enrollment period.  In the future, enrollment - and impacts on hospitals - could grow," Cantor added.
Horizon highlighted the racial and ethnic makeup of the 41,258 previously uninsured OMNIA policy holders, noting 15 percent are Latino, and 13 percent are black and 13 percent are Asian. Public sign-up events were held with organizations such as the Hispanic Statewide Chamber of Commerce, Horizon added.



More than three-quarters of OMNIA enrollees selected a mid-price "silver" or higher metallic level plan, based on the Affordable Care Act's four tiers of coverage corresponding to size of deductible and premiums. OMNIA's silver plans feature no deductible, no coinsurance, and co-pays of $50 or less when using a Tier 1 provider, according to Horizon.



Linda Schwimmer, president and CEO for the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, said OMNIA's cost savings would be enhanced if enrollees met the income requirements that qualify them for federal subsidies to help pay their premiums.


"That means that even if they go to a Tier 2 provider, they are receiving significant federal support to pay for it.  I think that is why both the OMNIA plan and the silver level were so popular," Schwimmer said.   


A 35-year-old man who buys a silver OMNIA plan on the health exchange pays $360.27 a month, 15 percent less than the Horizon Advantage plan which would cost him $424.94, Horizon spokesman Tom Vincz said. A couple, both 35 years old with two children under 21 would pay $1,094.98 under OMNIA, 15 percent less than the Advantage premium of $1,291.51.


"Overall, despite the valid concerns about transparency, consumer confusion, and updating the network adequacy rules, I think it is fantastic that so many previously uninsured people were able to afford a comprehensive insurance plan," she added
___________________________________________

We think it is pretty clear that both corporate and government health plans WILL DISAPPEAR---so what we see being built for the 'working class and poor' will be what WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% will get and these corporate and government plans will drop like hotcakes after the coming economic crash.

Well, my child is intelligent and will get that really good job we say----will she/he be able to compete with global labor pool for that good job.  We are leaving the age of MERITOCRACY and MOVING FORWARD to mediocracy and cronyism/nepotism not only from our own US 5% ---but globally that 1% and their 2% getting these jobs.

All of what is happening TODAY-----UNDER TRUMP was written in AFFORDABLE CARE ACT----is simply took several years of building structures for people to see NO ONE WILL HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE as one of my doctors in Baltimore said 10 years ago.

Who supported Clinton global Wall Street neo-liberals each election pushing REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES that actually cared for the 99% out of office?  Those global Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' 5% to the 1% players----HOLD THESE 5% BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN CITIZENS ACCOUNTABLE WHEN WE CANNOT ACCESS ORDINARY HEALTH CARE.

Striking Verizon workers soon to lose company health insurance coverage


Reprints Thomson Reuters
4/28/2016 12:00:00 AM




(Reuters) — A strike by nearly 40,000 Verizon Communications Inc. workers is in its third week with unions and the company still far apart on contract talks, even as employee healthcare benefits are set to expire on Saturday.



Workers, from network technicians to customer service representatives, in Verizon's Fios Internet, telephone and TV services walked off the job on April 13 in one of the largest U.S. strikes in recent years after contract talks hit an impasse.
A resolution on various issues, including temporary job relocations, pensions and moving call center jobs offshore, has yet to be reached, representatives of Verizon and the Communications Workers of America union said on Wednesday.



Verizon, which said last week that a long-drawn labor dispute would pressure its earnings, remains committed to reaching a fair deal, spokesman Rich Young said in a phone interview.
A meeting between Verizon and union representatives is scheduled for Thursday afternoon, he said.


Healthcare options


Verizon has notified striking workers that under federal law their health care coverage was set to expire on April 30, Young said.
Verizon has said it spent over $3.2 billion on healthcare for employees last year. The company offers insurance coverage to those employees who are actively working, Young said.


Striking employees have the option of seeking coverage under the U.S government's Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) health insurance plan to get temporary healthcare coverage.
"They think that this is going to be used as a wedge to break this strike. I assure you it will not," said Ed Mooney, vice president of CWA District 2-13, said in a phone interview.



The CWA also has funds, collected through contributions from affiliated union members and other donors, to help cover healthcare costs of members when needed, Mooney said.

"It's horrible. Most of us are parents, I have a daughter and the prospect of losing our children's healthcare is actually quite disturbing," Fitz Boyce, 45, a field technician at Verizon for over two decades, said in an interview at the picket line in front of the company's Times Square store in New York.



The strike affects Fios Internet, telephone and TV services across several U.S. East Coast states, including New York and Virginia.
Verizon has trained thousands of non-union employees over the past year to ensure no service disruption. The company has fielded over 60,000 requests since the strike began, Young said.


The unions have said that replacement workers do not have the necessary expertise, especially in highly technical jobs such as equipment installations.

_____________________________

This is the propaganda we are hearing in all in US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----reversing and going back to the old system would be PAINFUL and she lists some social progressive bones thrown at our citizens with addictions.

The only way WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% can indeed return to quality health care in US IS TO END AFFORDABLE CARE ACT and break up health system MONOPOLIES AND GLOBAL MONOPOLIES and take back health policy decisions from global health corporation executives and get it back to our communities and citizens.

It will be a shock in America as 99% of citizens will lose access to ordinary health care.  What does MOVING FORWARD DO?  Kills employment for all American citizens---what drives addictive behaviors ----depressions from being unemployed and unstable.



'Potentially huge shock to health systems

Kathleen Nolan, formerly the director of state policy and programs for the National Association of Medicaid Directors, discussed the importance of viewing potential cuts amid the context of the broader health system, which has undergone major changes since the ACA’s passage. Reverting to the health system we had before Obamacare would be painful, she said.

For example, as the opioid crisis has worsened in recent years, states that expanded Medicaid have helped provide treatment for those beneficiaries battling addiction. And, as insured populations grew through Medicaid expansion, other funding streams that once helped with uninsured care are no longer in place'.


Below we see Kellie is tied to global media and the ECONOMIST no less---the hyper neo-liberal news journal and from that pesky SAN FRAN global Google US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE. We happen to know CENTER FOR HEALTH JOURNALISM is a global Wall Street Clinton neo-liberal media outlet telling us what affordable health care looks like. 

Kellie Schmitt - Health Journalism Fellow
Fellow

Kellie Schmitt
Affordable Care Act Blogger, Freelance Health Reporter
Reporting on Health
Email Kellie Schmitt
About Myself: I write for Reporting on Health's Affordable Care Act blog. Previously, I was a health reporter for the Bakersfield Californian, a staff writer for the San Jose Mercury News, and a business reporter for the San Francisco Recorder. I spent two years reporting from China for publications including The Economist's Business China, China Economic Review, and CNN Travel.
In 2012, I was a Health Journalism Fellow. My project examined the high number of foreign-trained doctors in California's Central Valley, a series which won awards from the Association of Healthcare Journalists and the California Newspaper Publishers Association.  
I also worked with Reporting on Health's multi-part, collaborative series on the devastating toll Valley Fever has had on California's Central Valley.   


******************************************************



Remaking Health Care

Experts weigh in how to cover the big changes GOP plans for Medicaid


By Kellie Schmitt
July 28, 2017




Getty Images
As the country faces the possibility of massive Medicaid cuts, a panel of experts offered tips on how to navigate the fast-developing story in a Center for Health Journalism webinar this week.


Edwin Park, the vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Kathleen Nolan, a managing principal at Health Management Associates; and Lauren Sausser, a health care editor and reporter at The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina, offered ideas and expertise on a story that could affect communities across the nation.



Park focused on Republican efforts to create a “per capita cap” on federal Medicaid dollars as well as plans to reduce the federal government’s share of funding for the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion – both of which would shift more responsibly to states.
For states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government fully funded those expenses for three years, then phasing down the contribution until it reaches 90 percent in 2020 and beyond. If the federal government’s contribution is further reduced, states that expanded Medicaid will have to shoulder more of the costs. So-called “trigger states” have a provision that would end the expansion if the federal contribution drops, Park said.



The other major proposed change is a “per capita cap,” which would affect all states. Under current law, the federal government pays a percentage of a state’s Medicaid costs, which averages about 57 percent though it varies by state. Per capita caps would allow the federal government to set a fixed amount for each beneficiary, “with that fixed amount set a level below what would be provided under the current financing system,” Park said. Those figures would likely be adjusted annually at a rate that doesn’t keep up with soaring health care costs, he added.



As states face massive cuts, they would have three choices, he said: Raise taxes; cut other parts of their budget such as education; or cut Medicaid, leaving more and more people uninsured or underinsured.
“Those cuts are only going to get more and more severe over the long run, particularly as the population continues to age,” Park said.



Potentially huge shock to health systems


Kathleen Nolan, formerly the director of state policy and programs for the National Association of Medicaid Directors, discussed the importance of viewing potential cuts amid the context of the broader health system, which has undergone major changes since the ACA’s passage. Reverting to the health system we had before Obamacare would be painful, she said.


For example, as the opioid crisis has worsened in recent years, states that expanded Medicaid have helped provide treatment for those beneficiaries battling addiction. And, as insured populations grew through Medicaid expansion, other funding streams that once helped with uninsured care are no longer in place.



“If you suddenly have an increase in uninsured, those health system and hospitals are not yet prepared to deal with that shift back,” Nolan said.
To deal with the loss of insurance for so many, some states might do something innovative, such as offer state-only insurance products. Other may create new programs to address specific health needs.



In every state — regardless of whether they expanded Medicaid under the ACA — Medicaid populations will face cuts under per capita caps.
Nolan said the people most impacted will be those who use the most services, such as the frail elderly in nursing homes and people with disabilities. She emphasized, though, that Medicaid beneficiaries should not be lumped together. The impact of changes will be different depending upon the population affected — distinct groups may be pitted against each other in a fight for diminishing dollars.



Even if the GOP’s efforts to “repeal and replace” collapse, changes are likely still in store for Medicaid through state-specific waivers under existing law, she said. For example, some states might look into work requirements, drug testing, or cost sharing for Medicaid beneficiaries, she said.  
“A lot of conversations around these kind of waivers are happening more in expansion states, particularly conservative expansion states,” Nolan said, adding that some conversations might extend into other Medicaid populations.


Explaining the impact to audiences


Those Medicaid conversations can be complex for the average newspaper reader, said the Courier and Post’s Sausser.  And it might not be something they think they care about.
That’s why she makes sure to include several key facts in articles involving Medicaid. Along with costs, she mentions how many people are enrolled in her home state and how many of them are children and disabled.



“There are a lot of negative stereotypes in South Carolina — and I imagine in other states, too — about who qualifies for Medicaid,” she said.
In covering Medicaid, Sausser suggested that reporters find a policy mentor who can help with complicated health policy questions. And, she recommended getting to know not only the state’s current Medicaid director, but also previous directors who might speak more candidly now that they’re no longer in office.



To cut through the policy jargon, Sausser shared how she uses personal stories to demonstrate Medicaid’s impact. She recently wrote about an 11-year-old girl with sickle cell disease, who  “has received 45 blood transfusions and has been hospitalized 49 time.”
“If you can put a face and a story with policy, I think that’s a winning combination,” she said. 

If we look at the economy of a mid-sized city like Baltimore what would happen if all paper money and coin disappeared?  We saw the food riots on the video---we know riot policing and martial law will be close behind.  A government provides services and programs from tax revenue---that tax revenue comes back to each community for goods and services.  Our American WEST was developed by individual citizens staking claim in building a community and bartered among themselves for what they needed.  This is kind of what ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE global 1% are trying to install for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE.  The difference between MOVING FORWARD poverty and rebuilding American economic structures is this----that global 1% will still be in control of any governance ----it will break down at any time anything people build so we must GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS and STOP MOVING FORWARD in order to return to an economic system for the 99% black, white, and brown citizens.


Below we see one of many articles written by global 1% Wall Street players using that hybrid GOLD/SILVER/FIAT MONEY economy we promote only they see this all integrated into the WORLD CENTRAL BANK ONLINE DIGITAL currency which is basically keeping the same WORLD CENTRAL BANK in place -----that is NOT what we are suggesting.  There was plenty of economic writing before REAGAN/CLINTON about getting back to PRE-US FED======Our government before the Robber Baron FDR period used Wall Street money VERY LITTLE.

'In their 2014 book Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy — and What We Can Do About It, authors Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames propose a modified gold standard. They write, “The twenty-first century gold standard would fix the dollar to gold at a particular price…. The Federal Reserve would use its tools, primarily open market operations, to keep the value of the dollar tied at that rate of gold.”'


WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% DON'T HAVE TO REINVENT---WE HAVE CENTURIES OF STABLE ECONOMIC POLICY TO RETURN.

'The gold standard or gold exchange standard of fixed exchange rates prevailed from about 1870 to 1914, before which many countries followed bimetallism'.

Since the Robber Baron pols moved all US gold and silver stores from US Treasury and sold them to global 1%----WE THE PEOPLE will not have IMMEDIATELY any PRECIOUS METAL upon which to gauge a value for money this is why FIAT MONEY/trade of goods and services must be the start of rebuilding of local economies.

Below we see a LOCALIZE IT movement that looks just like Baltimore City's LOCALIZE IT movement-----being directed by global Wall Street Baltimore Development and global Johns Hopkins 'labor and justice' organizations.  The difference between REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE LOCALIZE IT movements and these are ------WE WORK TO STOP MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES and global corporate campuses that will NOT allow any of what we build to exist beyond the time it takes to build those global corporate campuses.  THIS IS A FALSE LOCALIZE IT MOVEMENT.

Localize It! What Resilience Looks Like


Save the Dates: Saturday-Sunday, October 21-22, 2017




Localize It! What Resilience Looks Like



A two-day solutions focused convergence for leaders and collaborators engaged in accelerating a localizing movement, in our region;  Systemic renewal in an age of climate crisis, economic injustice, and frayed democratic systems.


Join us at the Vermont Law School (South Royalton VT) to engage in lively discussion with a wide array of leaders and experts in numerous break out sessions, and these keynote speakers:

• Frances Moore Lappe, author of Diet for A Small Planet and founder and director, Small Planet Institute  
  • Frances Moore Lappé is the author or co-author of 18 books about world hunger, living democracy, and the environment. Beginning with the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet in 1971, her books include Democracy’s Edge, Getting a Grip (in two editions), EcoMind, and, most recently, World Hunger: 10 Myths. With a focus on the roots of the U.S. democracy crisis and how Americans are creatively responding to the challenge, her current work includes the online Field Guide to the Democracy Movement and the forthcoming book Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want, coauthored with Adam Eichen (Beacon Press, Sept. 2017).The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., describes Diet for a Small Planet as “one of the most influential political tracts of the times.” In 2008, it was selected as one of 75 Books by Women Whose Words Have Changed the World by members of the Women’s National Book Association. Frances was also named by Gourmet Magazine as one of 25 people (including Thomas Jefferson, Upton Sinclair, and Julia Child), whose work has changed the way America eats. Her books have been translated into 15 languages and are used widely in university courses.

 

• Helena Norberg Hodge, Founder and Director, Local Futures
  • Author and filmmaker Helena Norberg-Hodge is a pioneer of the ‘new economy’ movement. Through writing and public lectures on three continents, she has been promoting an economics of personal, social and ecological well-being for more than thirty years. She is a widely respected analyst of the impact of the global economy on communities, local economies, and personal identity, and is a leading proponent of ‘localization’, or decentralization, as a means of countering those impacts.

 

• Chuck Collins, senior policy analyst, Institute for Policy Studies  
  • Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good where he co-edits Inequality.org. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and author of several books, including 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It.  He is co-author with Bill Gates Sr. of Wealth and Our Commonwealth, (Beacon Press, 2003), a case for taxing inherited fortunes. He is co-author with Mary Wright of The Moral Measure of the Economy, a book about Christian ethics and economic life. His forthcoming book is Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good (Chelsea Green, Fall 2016).  He is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, a network of business leaders, high-income households and partners working together to promote shared prosperity and fair taxation. This network merged in 2015 with the Patriotic Millionaires.  In 1995, he co-founded United for a Fair Economy (UFE) to raise the profile of the inequality issue and support popular education and organizing efforts to address inequality. He was Executive Director of UFE from 1995-2001 and Program Director until 2005.

 

• Jonathan Rosenthal, Executive Director, New Economy Coalition and co-founder, Equal Exchange 
  • Jonathan Rosenthal is the Executive Director of the New Economy Coalition. He has spent over 30 years working to transform the power of business from a destructive force of accumulation into a healing force honoring the interconnectedness of all people and our earth. He co-founded Equal Exchange, Oké USA and Belmont-Watertown Local First. He has consulted with people and organizations all across the trade justice movement. He is the author of numerous articles and is a frequent speaker at colleges and events, is a board member of the Coffee Trust and an emeritus board member of Root Capital.  Jonathan is a lifelong vegetarian foodie and a huge fan of his local Watertown, MA library. He lives with his amazing partner, Ora Grodsky, organizational development consultant, and has two inspiring daughters.

 

• Sherri Mitchell, Founder and Director, Land Peace Foundation 
  • Sherri Mitchell was born and raised on the Penobscot Indian Reservation, at Indian Island in Maine.  She received her J.D. and a certificate in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy and has practiced law in a public and civil capacity for many years. She founded the Land Peace Foundation to provide low cost legal assistance, alternative dispute resolution and training programs to Indigenous populations, groups, and organizations, in order to protect their human rights, homelands, sacred sites, resources and cultural way of life.  Sherri is a leader whose wisdom and vision guide her every step and help to inspire all of those who meet and work with her.  “We must recognize that the entire natural system is one life system, not a series of saleable, fragmented parts. The most destructive illusion held by humanity is the belief that everything is tied to an economic engine that has no heart, no compassion and places no value on life.  Today, we lack reliable leadership within our world governments. We have misplaced our trust in governmental leaders and the leaders of industry, who are often times one in the same. They have repeatedly failed us by trying to maintain their profits, economies and their power over the people.” 

Sponsors: Local Futures, Vermonters for a New Economy, Sustainable Future Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation, New Economy Law Center at Vermont Law School, BALE (Building A Local Economy), and New England Resilience and Transition Network.
Chris Wood of BALE (Building A Local Economy) explains the premise for the convergence:




“Intentional localization of production and all life-sustaining activity is key to our future thriving. This important work is joyous when done in community. There are many pathways toward greater local self-reliance and resilience.”



– Pamela Boyce Simms


Climate change, soaring inequality, social injustice… is this really the best our economy can do? Is this the society we choose to embrace?
I know that we care about these things… and I am aware that we mostly feel powerless to change the way things are. I hear those voices that say making the kind of fundamental change really needed is far beyond the capacity of us here in our communities. The forces that drive the global economy to which we seem inextricably tied are both powerful and seemingly invisible. The system seems rigged against us, or at least against achieving decent lives for most of us.



Consider, however, that the global economic model that now drives much of the commerce, politics and culture of this world is really only several decades old. Even more importantly, it is human made. This means that if it was created by us, we can undo it.
True… it won’t be easy. The forces that promote globalization control most of the avenues of information to which people have access, and their propaganda saturates the media and internet. But the fact is that, not just where I live in the White River Valley of Vermont, but all over the world, there is a prevailing movement away from the structures of globalization. In Vermont, our local food system’s transformation is helping to lead the way. And there is so much more that can be turned toward local capacity.



For me, 2017 is the year to powerfully advance the concept of “localizing” and reimagining the appropriate scale under which systems should work. I have worked with many others to help shape one organization that has consciously worked to advance a new narrative that runs in contrast to the old story. That new narrative is called localization. Our intention has been to create as many powerful locally-driven and inspired initiatives as possible and to clearly speak our truth about what is at the heart of what we need to change if we are to survive. To that end, we offer this systemic solution…. a solution that, if strong and powerful enough, can build resilience against the forces of those familiar injustices we’ve internalized and tolerated for too long. Surely, it’s not the only answer because we need many, but it’s what will help build what I believe is a desperately needed new story of living on this planet.



The essential first step in this process is to scale down and localize economic activity with the goal of meeting our needs – our basic needs in particular – closer to home. This does not mean an end to trade; not even international trade. And it does not mean reverting to isolation or nationalism or tribalism, the counter-productive framework that appears to drive a Donald Trump.



As Helena Norberg-Hodge, Executive Director of Local Futures observes: “Localization is the real solution multiplier, with immediate economic, social and ecological benefits. By reducing the scale and reach of the economy, the environmental impacts of economic activity shrink as well. And the argument for localizing goes well beyond the environment. Among other things, localization allows us to live more ethically as citizens and consumers. In human scale economies, people are more connected to each other – something that, as we are increasingly realizing, is crucial to our health and well-being.”



It will take determined effort in localities everywhere to create – or restore – local knowledge and local (scale-appropriate) democracy. It can be done. There are alternative energy coops to emerge, there is an ever-more powerful local food system that could provide good food to everyone (not just the well-off), there are localized transportation models to develop, there are cooperatives and socially aligned businesses to emerge in every sector, there can be credit unions with true community social missions, there are time banks and strong barter systems that operate outside the dollar economy, there are creative artists and craftspeople providing clothing and wares made from local resources. And, surely, there are hundreds of other initiatives that will emerge and inspire us.



To be clear, this is not just adaptation to a status quo (e.g. taking the lead on climate adaptation is not the answer if you have not changed the hearts and mind of those involved in that work).


To some, these ideas may seem relatively small and inconsequential, but just imagine that they are happening a hundred thousand times over in other communities around the world. Localizing done right – that is, in an inclusive way – offers the best path toward maintaining and building regional cohesion.



Localizing is a slow, patient path that requires trust, persistence, and hard work. Such mundane work may sound boring in a time of political crisis and turmoil. But we do need to build a future that will sustain us… and the rest of nature in which we can thrive… even as the old story unravels.



Chris Wood is the Director of BALE (Building A Local Economy), a community resource center for local initiatives in the White River Valley of Vermont that seeks to bring forward a systems focus to our economy, ecology, culture and society.  Pamela Boyce Simms is a trainer for Transition US, an organization that supports building communities that are resilient to the challenges of peak oil and climate change.  Local Futures works to protect and revitalize cultural and biological diversity by strengthening local communities and economies worldwide.

_________________________________________
Baltimore as with all US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES simply have LOCALIZE MOVEMENTS cleaning up communities and building green space and gardens on real estate that will soon be used for global corporate campus and global 1% living -------what happens when this city local economy is displaced?  If a group is not fighting US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES AND GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS ECONOMIES TIED TO GLOBAL WALL STREET-----they are not building REAL LOCALIZED ECONOMIES.

In Baltimore we have a small group of citizens building what they are calling TUBMAN CITY----great food gardens that could be that local trading partner to another Baltimore community having talent in furniture building et al.  When you are building a Tubman City or a MICA/Johns Hopkins trade shops these will not be in the hands of local citizens --the sharing economy is being built by global Wall Street and the global 1%-----NOT THE 99%.

Below we see a citizen saying the same thing-----only this person is saying it on TEDX BALTIMORE which is global 1% WORLD MEDIA outlet.  Our Baltimore City Paper has been in the hands of BALTIMORE SUN for several years so we like this message but question Ericson as a leader in building a REAL LOCALIZED ECONOMY.....never heard City Paper shout out against MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES---they even said they support global Wall Street Baltimore Development.

AGAIN, PLEASE WATCH WHAT LEADERS TAKE HOLD OF GOOD POLICY LIKE REBUILDING OUR LOCALIZED ECONOMY.

We cannot rebuild a localized economy in the midst of global corporate campus  building----these policies for WE THE PEOPLE ARE LIFE AND DEATH for the 99% of citizens.

The dangers of having land confiscated by global corporate campus development in US cities is REAL for WE THE PEOPLE----the first act of localization is STOP MOVING FORWARD ---NO TO GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES.


Feb. 2, 2015 1:42 pm

At TEDxBaltimore, City Paper’s Edward Ericson slams ‘sharing economy’

Reprising a written piece from over the summer, Ericson asked TEDx attendees: What is the social cost of Uber and Lyft?


At TEDxBaltimore, City Paper’s Edward Ericson slams ‘sharing economy’


Edward Ericson Jr. speaks at TEDxBaltimore 2015.
(Photo by Andrew Zaleski)



Edward Ericson Jr., the bearded, bespectacled Baltimore City Paper staff writer, took the stage just after 5 p.m. during the final session of Friday’s TEDxBaltimore event to pose three questions. When confronted with any problem:

1. Do you ignore it?
2. Do you try to solve it?
3. Or do you exploit it to turn a profit?

When it comes to the tech industry — the Silicon Valley world of buzzwords, startups, apps and venture capital — the answer is seemingly always No. 3, Ericson argued. And nowhere in the myriad realm of innovation is that exploitation carried out better than in the “sharing economy.”




As he told the crowd of hundreds still remaining in the auditorium of Morgan State University’s fine arts center: The sharing economy is “predicated on the idea that there’s always going to be a huge pool of people who are willing to work desperate hours for no pay and no benefits.”



Ericson’s precise beef is with ridesharing services Uber and Lyft, both of which have been available in Baltimore city since 2013. (And, at least in Uber’s case, involved in a protracted war with state regulators.) In a reasoned argument that was both incisive and self-effacing, Ericson’s essential allegation is that technological progress of the kind Uber and Lyft have exploited is really just an upending of the social compact that ensures people can earn a decent salary to get by, have a life, maybe raise a family, and retire comfortably.



“To some people in the tech industry, civilization is an obstacle,” he said. “Innovation is progress, minus the Enlightenment.”


Ridesharing services, in this context, are only possible today because their business models have “nothing to do” with workers making a living.


Observe the language employed by ridesharing services, Ericson said: Their “driver-partners” are “micro-entrepreneurs” who are “building businesses.” By the way, we’ll take 20 percent of what you earn, flood the streets with drivers to drive down fares, and provide zero benefits for you.



Ericson argued that this makes Uber and Lyft no better than the taxi companies they routinely criticize. After all, the taxi industry began transforming its drivers from full-time employees into independent contractors beginning in the 1970s, ensuring bigger profits for taxi companies at the direct expense of drivers.



It’s not a wholly new insight for Ericson. He previously outlined this beef in a City Paper piece — “The desperate hustle as a way of life” — that went online in early June. (Indeed, it was the reason he was invited to speak at TEDxBaltimore.) Ericson told the crowd the piece received 60,000 views in a couple of days, a figure amounting to 20 times more traffic than the average City Paper blog post.


Now here was Ericson at a TEDx event — arguably the bastion of chummy, buzzword-laden technological back-slapping — to lay down his argument, in verbal form, at the feet of folks probably more likely than anyone in Baltimore city to hitch a ride in the closest Uber or Lyft vehicle.



As Ericson asked at the end of his talk: “What are the sharing economy people choosing, and what are you going to do about it?”


-30-Andrew Zaleski is a freelance journalist outside Washington, D.C. He's written for Wired, Backchannel, Popular Science, Fortune, the Washington Post Magazine, the Atlantic and elsewhere.

______________________________________

How did the OLD WEST AMERICA build its government?  Citizens volunteered to work in government agencies in lieu of taxes----the local government buys everything from local citizens and their businesses----this is a local economy and the US FED AND WALL STREET were not to be seen.

The problem for WE THE PEOPLE today as opposed to back in 1700-1800s is this----we have higher population numbers and concentrated US cities with real estate being held hostage by that dastardly 1% for future corporate development.

It is essential to stop the global corporate campus use of our decaying community lots to establish REAL LONG TERM LOCAL FOOD, BUILDING TRADE businesses------so a TUBMAN CITY will be in existence longer than a decade or two it takes to build a global corporate campus over top.

We don't want to hinder any attempts at small business start ups for our youth IF they have a future and if they do not depend on MONEY.  WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% must wrap our minds around going back to basics of life and building business systems around that.  Someone making TSHIRTS from scratch and not simply stylizing already made TSHIRTS for example.  If we are making our own clothes from scratch we don't need to be in a global market---we don't need wealth to buy these products.  We don't depend on global corporations to buy our product---we are making them for the 99% citizens of Baltimore and may well trade them to get goods and services we need as well.

MADE IN BALTIMORE must start with buying living in Baltimore--if we depend on global 1% and their 2% living in US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES----we will always be that third world impoverished citizen.

WE ARE SHOUTING -----REBUILDING LOCAL ECONOMIES ON TOP OF GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUSES AND GLOBAL FACTORIES IS NOT LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVISM ----as this article states-----it is POP-UP SHOPS----temporary and hustling rather than build real stable, lasting, small businesses filling the needs of fellow 99% of citizens.


“Made in Baltimore” Label Designed to Boost Local Economy


By Johnny Magdaleno | April 11, 2017

Made in Baltimore pop-up shop

Rasheed Aziz doesn’t see young drug dealers navigating the streets of Baltimore as people who are inherently lawless. In fact, he says they’re usually some of the top performers when he’s able to get them involved in his CityWide Youth Entrepreneurship Program.



“They were already involving themselves in entrepreneurship,” he says. “It just was entrepreneurship that wasn’t positive.”


This year he’ll have 35 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 learning how to design their own clothing brands with CityWide’s support. That program doesn’t pay, but he runs another program called Frozen Desert Sorbet that lets those students learn how to run their first business venture by selling snow cones in their neighborhood, pocketing the profit from each sale.


The budding clothing designers who make it through both programs will be just a few of the local talents qualifying for a new city-run program called Made in Baltimore. Taking a page from successful buy-local campaigns like SFMade in San Francisco, Andy Cook, the city staffer who founded the program, says it’s a marketing designation that can bring new types of opportunity to Baltimore’s economy.


“Seventy-five percent of the people in Baltimore don’t have a college degree, so there are a lot of issues and questions when we’re talking about ‘job creation’ here,” he says. “With entry-level ‘job creation’ what we’re often seeing is service sector employment, which is part time and doesn’t come with benefits.”


A 2014 study of more than 1,000 job seekers in Baltimore commissioned by the Opportunity Collaborative found that there are “practically no entry-level jobs” for those without a college degree that pay $22 an hour — enough to support a small family. It also noted that job seekers from low-income neighborhoods are kept out of traditional employment by the high dollar and time costs of traveling from said neighborhoods to booming job centers, and about a fifth of job seekers can’t qualify for traditional jobs because of criminal records.


Cook says giving small businesses the extra boost of being backed by a city-led marketing campaign can help them scale, and create jobs that are “good quality but also accessible to those without higher education.” They’ll be able to put the “Made in Baltimore” logo on their product label, or in their storefront window, but they’ll also benefit from technical support from the city on how to thrive as a business and how to recruit employees.


He started building the program after helping compile a piece of research for the city. Using census data collected between 2003 and 2012, he found that advanced manufacturing companies without employees grew in number by 57 — marking a nine-year increase of 257 percent. Other manufacturing establishments (again, without employees) rose by 67 percent in the same time period.
Alongside those jumps, employees in the manufacturing sector declined.


“We see big companies shedding jobs but see a lot of people starting up their own in light manufacturing,” he says. Manufacturing is traditionally thought of as big operations churning out thousands of high-tech items like cars or computers, but the mother of two making jams in her kitchen and selling them at local farmers markets falls within the industry too.


Made in Baltimore wants to help individuals like that jam producer turn her work into a full-time gig by giving entrepreneurs a network of other local producers through which they can lift each other up. Cook has coordinated four pop-up shops that highlight Baltimore businesses, with the most recent one last December featuring 45 makers. He says they’ve generated an average of $25,000 to $30,000 in sales per event.


“There’s lines out the door, a lot of press coverage,” he says. “It seems, anecdotally, that it’s something that people are craving.”


Keith Bradley, manager of the Made in Kansas City retail stores in Missouri’s largest city, says they work with about 120 local artists and makers who’ve seen similar success by associating their name with the brand.


“It’s exciting, because you watch these smaller companies go from doing something that’s their passion on the side to quitting their day jobs and getting to do that full time,” says Bradley.


Cook’s key influence, SFMade, is also reporting strong growth. It works with more than 640 local certified manufacturers with a payroll total of 5,000-plus employees. They’re getting ready to debut a 4-floor, 50,000-square-foot industrial workshop where small-scale producers can rent space starting in June 2018.


As small-scale manufacturers get pushed out of San Francisco’s pricier real estate and into poor neighborhoods like Bayview-Hunters Point, SFMade helps owners recruit local talent from the low-income communities. “A lot of the times, without SFMade, [manufacturers] just don’t know that the workforce resources are available in the area,” says Janet Lees, SFMade’s chief program officer. Transplanted manufacturers and workers from the traditionally black neighborhoods southeast of San Francisco are now working together to “access the very affluent consumer base that’s here,” she says.


Going forward, Made in Baltimore will work to paint a detailed picture of the local maker scene. They want to know just how many small-scale producers there are, crafting gems in their kitchens or backyards or garages that they then sell to neighbors. “We don’t think a lot of that is being captured by the broader economic studies going on in the city,” Cook says.


They’re also scanning for real estate in industrially zoned areas with the hope of creating a space similar to what SFMade is creating for rental spaces. Meanwhile, one of Baltimore’s newest makerspaces, Open Works, has offered to let Made in Baltimore run some of its workshops and presentations at their facility.
As for drivers of the local industry like Aziz, he says the new program will turn even more youth with great ideas off the street and into the local economy. “Maybe they haven’t scaled as of yet, but I’m out here. I see them,” he says. “They’re coming.”
_____________________________________________

NEXT CITY is global 1%----it is tied to CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY----we do not want to build a pipeline of SUBCONTRACTORS TO SUBCONTRACTOR BUSINESSES

'Inspiring Better Cities

Next City is a nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire social, economic and environmental change in cities through journalism and events around the world.

Our vision is for a world in which cities are not in crisis and are instead, leading the way toward a more sustainable, equitable future'.

Below we see what US 99% of citizens do not want as a local economy------what starts as stenciling TSHIRTS becomes an UNDERARMOUR SWEAT SHOP CONTRACTOR.  This is how Foreign Economic Zones work overseas =====it is wildly exploitative---it always includes child labor and we feel this is what is growing as local economies in our US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.

Please think about returning to our strong US economic model of free trade with small businesses----do not aspire to be that THIRD WORLD GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SUBCONTRACTOR TO SUBCONTRACTORS.  Sadly this has become these few decades of CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA outsourced government spending.

THINK TO OURSELVES---IF AN ECONOMY HAS NO MONEY HOW WILL I KEEP MY FAMILY SAFE AND SUPPORTED----TRADE WITH COMMUNITY MEMBERS WHAT PEOPLE REALLY NEED IN EVERYDAY LIFE.

This Chinese economic system of subcontractors to subcontractors already holds our US cities----what we are seeing is LOCALIZE IT MOVEMENTS simply expanding these same Chinese models in our US cities-----THIS IS THE OPPOSITE of rebuilding a local economy.


St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO)

New Study Lambastes China Subcontractors for Nike and Reebok



By Ap
Read previewArticle excerpt


Subcontractors making shoes in China for Nike and Reebok use workers as young as 13 who earn as little as 10 cents an hour putting in 17 hours daily in enforced silence, a watchdog group charges.


Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange provided a study of the Chinese factories to The Associated Press. He said Global Exchange was acting for two human rights groups in Hong Kong that interviewed scores of workers from four major sports shoe subcontractors in China's Pearl River Delta. The four factories, which employ almost 80,000 people, were monitored in 1995 and again in June and July of this year.


The subcontractors at all four sites are violating not only "the most basic tenets of Chinese labor law, they're also flagrantly violating (Nike's and Reebok's) own codes of conduct," Chan Ka Wai, assistant director of Hong Kong's Christian Industrial Committee, said Saturday. The 30-year-old private, nonprofit group wrote the report with Hong Kong-based Asia Monitor Resource Centre. The two groups are funded by church groups and private donations worldwide, Wai said. At the Wellco plant in Dongguan Province, owned by a Korean subcontractor for Nike, people as young as 13 reportedly were doing sewing and cutting work, workers said. …

______________________________________

THIS IS NOT BUILDING A LOCAL ECONOMY FOLKS------we see Chinese economics filled with subcontractors to subcontractors with only these FACTORY HOUSE 'entrepreneurs' making some earnings.  No one owns anything being used to create these products----we watched overseas as these kinds of business structures kept citizens toiling and impoverished for decades.  Ultimately almost all that is produced at these WORKSHOPS will be enfolded into global corporate campuses and global factories and their outsourced work.  Our Latin American, Asian, Middle-Eastern global labor pool citizens can tell WE THE PEOPLE where these LOCAL ECONOMY structures lead.

 WHY NOT RETURN TO REAL MADE IN AMERICA ECONOMICS AND NOT INSTALL MADE IN CHINA ECONOMIC STRUCTURES HERE IN US.



SFMade zeroes in on tenants for its first affordable maker space in San Francisco

Jul 6, 2017, 1:16pm PDT Updated Jul 6, 2017, 3:46pm PDT
Industries & Tags
Commercial Real Estate

Alejandra Reyes-Velarde Editorial Intern San Francisco Business TimesCarolyn Seng

​When San Francisco's first affordable maker space opens next year, it will house screen printers, an apparel company and medical device makers. Those are just some of the businesses that intend to rent space at 150 Hooper Ave., where PlaceMade, a non-profit developer of affordable manufacturing space, is under construction on a 56,000-square-foot maker hub.


We do not need MEGA FARMS in LOCALIZE IT----we need subsistence farming on lots large enough to grow the material that becomes CLOTH for our clothing. We need lots of timber growth pine et al as material for building our furniture. Growing food is critical but a REAL LOCALIZE IT economy grows material for all community product needs.
If we return to growing HEMP to sell to the highest buyer ---and not to build our communities and citizens----we will be MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE GLOBAL LABOR POOL CORPORATE CAMPUS ENSLAVEMENT.

This article from LA TIMES is of course the same global Wall Street players and pols thinking how to create their next CASH CROP-----please think what will WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% DO IF WE HAVE NO MONEY.

Baltimore City has plenty of real estate for these small businesses that REALLY is building a structure for A LOCALIZE IT ECONOMY the 1% are simply keeping it locked up to global corporate campus development.




Op-Ed A tip for American farmers: Grow hemp, make money
June 25, 2014


After a 77-year break, hemp plants are growing in American soil again. Right now, in fact. If you hear farmers from South Carolina to Hawaii shouting "God bless America," the reason isn't because Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence on hemp paper (he did). Nor is it because the canvas that put

the "covered" in pioneer covered wagons was made of hemp, nor that the hemp webbing in his parachute saved George H.W. Bush's life in World War II.Nope. It's because U.S. policy is finally acknowledging that hemp can help restore our agricultural economy, play a key role in dealing with climate change and, best of all, allow American family farmers to get in on a hemp market that, just north of us in Canada, is verging on $1 billion a year.


Hemp is a variety of cannabis — and thus a cousin of marijuana — that contains 0.3% or less of the psychoactive component THC. (Marijuana plants typically contain 5% to 20% THC.) You can't get high from hemp, but starting in 1937, U.S. drug laws made cultivating it off-limits.


Finally, the U.S. hemp industry is back. A provision in the 2014 farm bill signed by President Obama on Feb. 7 removed hemp grown for research purposes from the Controlled Substances Act, the main federal drug law.





Not a moment too soon. American farmers have been watching as Canadian farmers clear huge profits from hemp: $250 per acre in 2013. By comparison, South Dakota State University predicts that soy, a major crop, will net U.S. farmers $71 per acre in 2014.

Hemp takes half the water that wheat does, and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate change era. -- Colorado farmer Ryan Loflin

Canada's windfall has been largely due to the American demand for omega-balanced hempseed oil. But hemp is also a go-to material for dozens of applications all over the world. In a Dutch factory recently, I held the stronger-than-steel hemp fiber that's used in Mercedes door panels, and Britain's Marks and Spencer department store chain used hemp fiber insulation in a new flagship outlet. "Hempcrete" outperforms fiberglass insulation.



Farmers I've interviewed from Oregon to Ohio have gotten the memo. In a Kansas-abutting corner of eastern Colorado, in the town of Springfield, 41-year-old Ryan Loflin wants to save his family farm with hemp. "It takes half the water that wheat does," Loflin told me, scooping up a handful of drought-scarred soil so parched it evoked the Sahara, "and provides four times the income. Hemp is going to revive farming families in the climate-change era."


From an agronomic perspective, American farmers need to start by importing dozens of hemp varieties (known as cultivars) from seed stock worldwide. This is vital because our own hemp seed stock, once the envy of the world, was lost to prohibition. This requires diversity and quantity because North Dakota's soil and climate are different from Kentucky's, which are different from California's. Also, the broad variety of hemp applications requires distinct cultivars.



Legally, farmers and researchers doing pilot programs in the 15 states that have their own hemp legislation (including California) now have the right to import those seeds. The point of the research authorization in the farm bill is explicitly to rebuild our seed stock. Such research is how the modern Canadian hemp industry was kick-started in 1998.

But one final hurdle has been placed in front of American hemp entrepreneurs. In Kentucky, U.S. Customs officials, at the behest of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in May seized a 286-pound shipment of Italian hemp seed bound for the state's agriculture department. After a weeklong standoff, a federal agency had to be reminded by the federal courts that the law had changed and Kentucky's seed imports were legal.



The problem is as much an entrenched bureaucratic mind-set as the ink drying on the new federal hemp policy. DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart told a law enforcement group last month that the hoisting of a hemp flag above the U.S. Capitol last July 4 was "the low point in my career."



It should have been a high point. Hemp's economic potential is too big to ignore. When he was China's president, Hu Jintao visited that nation's hemp fiber processors in 2009 to demand that farmers cultivate 2 million acres to replace pesticide-heavy cotton. Canada funded its cultivar research for farmers, with today's huge payoff.


Even Roger Ford, a politically conservative Kentucky utility owner, told me his Patriot BioEnergy's biofuels division would be planting hemp on coal- and tobacco-damaged soil the moment it was legal. Why? To use the fiber harvest for clean biomass energy. "We have a proud history of hemp in the South," Ford told me.



Congress knows the farm bill hemp provision is just a baby step. The real solution is the Industrial Hemp Farming Act, introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), which would allow nationwide commercial hemp cultivation. Colorado, already ahead of federal law on legalizing psychoactive cannabis, is also in front on hemp; it has a state law allowing commercial hemp cultivation. At least 1,600 acres were planted this season.

Wyden's bill should be fast-tracked. In the meantime, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) believes hemp is so important for the Bluegrass State that he's not waiting for another brouhaha over seed imports. He added an amendment to a bill that controls the DEA's budget to specifically protect imported hemp seeds from seizure. It passed in the House 246 to 162 on May 30.
It's a necessary move: Just last week at the Canadian border, the DEA seized another shipment of hemp seeds, this time bound for Colorado farmers. This counterproductive nonsense must stop.



American farmers and investors need our support to catch up with Canada's and the rest of the world's hemp head start. Now. As Loflin put it when I toured his family's 1,200-acre Colorado spread, "I'm planting hemp to show my neighbors that small farmers have a real option as businesspeople in the digital age."



We're down to 1% of Americans farming; it was 30% when our world-leading hemp industry was stymied in 1937. The crop is more valuable today than it was then. We should be waving flags and holding parades for the farmers ready to plant the crop that Thomas Jefferson called "vastly desirable." I know I'm ready. To cheer, and to plant.

________________________________________
We like how this discussion states clearly----the US has been exporting INFLATION for these few decades---this means the FIAT MONEY scheme creating new 'TOOLS' for the US FED ended with manipulated and fraudulent zero rates for inflation along with interest rates ----hiding the fact that US inflation was always that same 5% and indeed has been climbing through these several years of Obama.
We like as well how this video makes clear---the objective is war driven by global banking----no matter whether a Trump or a Hillary. It is the chaos of war when global 1% install new MONETARY structures and this is when WORLD CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL ONLINE CURRENCY will replace the US DOLLAR.
REMEMBER, DON'T GET MAD AT 99% OF WHITE, BLACK, BROWN CITIZENS WHEN WE HAVE NO MONEY---HOLD THAT 5% TO THE 1% ACCOUNTABLE.
The plan will be to send in the IMF/World Bank for a few decades of receivership controlling all economic development---but what the goal will be as we shout----GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS SOCIALISM where WE THE PEOPLE eat, live, work, are schooled on these campuses in exchange for being paid ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. ...so no money is needed. Only those global 1% and their 2% will have currency they exchange for designer manufacturing, designer services.

End of the Dollar?
Is the dollar coming to its end? We look at the potential of economic collapse, the influence of the IMF, Chinese inflation, and how to advance the economy w...
youtube.com



Those having followed Citizens' Oversight Maryland for a decade or more know what STEFAN is saying in this video is exactly what we have shouted these several years since the 2008 economic crash. I like all he says except the very last statement about DON'T BLAME FREE MARKET CAPITALISM----we agree but the 1913 creation of US FED was not a government agency----the FED has always been PRIVATE ----that was only one of the problems.
We will discuss health care policy next week----please GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS AND STOP MOVING FORWARD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
STEFAN is right wing-----we are left wing----and we both agree!

 This video done in 2014----things went wild after this video

Dead Dollar Walking: The Truth About Government Debt


Global government debt has reached over one hundred trillion dollars. But where has all of that money really gone? There will be no economic recovery. Prepar...
youtube.com

The global 99% of citizens understand WORLD CENTRAL BANK is a bad policy.  Those professional global sweat shop labor pool able to receive any actual income will never see it----it will be electronically deposited, fees, taxes, fines will be deducted, privatized 401K/Social Security will continue to be invested in the worst of investments to send that revenue to the top----as with CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  FIXED today in US BANKING SYSTEM will become REALLY FIXED with WORLD CENTRAL BANK.   A 0.0009% of 'very smart men' determining the financial flow of global money to get rid of GOVERNMENT interference because politicians are corrupt----REALLY?  Who corrupts these 'elected' politicians ----same people programming the BIG DEAD HEAD MATHEMATICAL MODELED FINANCE.  It's important to see these MOVING FORWARD policies clearly have a goal of eliminating all national sovereignty and any rights of 99% of citizens as US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES simply become that independent CITY STATE colonial entity----just as Foreign Economic Zones overseas these several decades.

I like this article saying SARBANES OXLEY and regulations tied to that bill needed a super-computer to abide by law when EVERYONE knows there is ABSOLUTELY no ABIDING BY SARBANES OXLEY finance laws---those laws alone if enforced would have sent all global Wall Street bank executives and CFOs to jail.

Obama funded the installation of these super-computers across the nation as part of SMART CITIES and that includes a CITY STATE financial economy controlled by computer models programmed at ONE WORLD WORLD CENTRAL BANK.  These super-computers are installed mostly in global IVY LEAGUE universities for MEGA DATA including financial MANIPULATION.  Think to where our pensions and retirements are invested NOW with just the start of computer modeling finance---always used as FODDER.  Who can afford such computer finance systems?  The global 1% installs them---

DID I READ THE GREEKS WERE JOINING TO BUY THEIR OWN SUPER-COMPUTER----REALLY FOLKS!  JOIN THE 99% IN FIGHTING FOR CONTROL OF LOCAL ECONOMY.

REMEMBER ----OUR GLOBAL IVY LEAGUE ENDOWMENTS ARE ALMOST TOTALLY DERIVED FROM WALL STREET FRAUD AND THE SUCKING OF LOCAL TAX REVENUE AGAIN INVOLVING FRAUD.

When we hear mega-data in our local policy discussions----this WORLD CENTRAL BANK computer modeled finance is tied into these databases. Info goes in----analysis goes to WORLD CENTRAL BANK----sent back to our US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE. Is that like Baltimore going into bankruptcy and being handed to WORLD BANK/IMF----and never being freed from this capture? ABSOLUTELY.

Supercomputers for Finance: A New Challenge

By Julian FieldenFebruary 29, 2008


According to analyst group IDC, revenue for the overall supercomputing market grew a full 18 percent compared to the same period last year, to reach $3.0 billion in the third quarter of 2007.



Growth of this scale is the result of several factors:

• In the university market, the traditional home of the supercomputer, growth is driven by increasing budgets swelled by European coffers, investment and knowledge partnerships with private firms and larger aggregated UK university and college department budgets.
• In mainstream markets, growth is driven by a need for competitive advantage, efficiency and productivity gains and to some extent, Microsoft’s recently launched Compute Cluster Server broadening the market and encouraging widespread adoption of supercomputing technologies.

By any measure, finance is one of the strongest growth sectors for supercomputers, driven by ever increasing data volumes, greater data complexity and significantly more challenging data analysis — a key outcome from greater competition and regulation (through BASEL I, BASEL II, and Sarbanes-Oxley for example).




Financial organisations use the power and performance of supercomputers in a variety of ways:

• Portfolio optimisation – to run models and optimise thousands of individual portfolios overnight based on the previous day’s trading results.
• Valuation of financial derivatives — A re-insurance firm, for example, may need to value and compute hedge strategies for hundreds of thousands of policy holders in its portfolio.
• Detection of credit card fraud – supercomputers enable a bank to easily run more fraud detection algorithms against tens of millions of credit card accounts.
• Hedge fund trading — supercomputers allow for faster reaction time to market conditions, enabling analysts to evaluate more sophisticated algorithms that take into account larger data sets.

Today, financial organisations are aiming to increase the computational power and performance at their disposal in one of three ways.


Some financial organisations will work directly with universities and colleges to draw on the power and performance of their academic supercomputers.


For example, a financial analysis firm called CD02 has recently teamed-up with The Department of Computing at Surrey University on a three-year bid to look at ways to develop better pricing and risk analysis technology, which will ultimately help banks, hedge funds and investment outfits to trade in a financial instrument called a collateralised debt obligation, or CDO. This project, sponsored by the former DTI, centres on the power of the supercomputer to model huge problem spaces and simulations to explore very complex risk analysis — but is just one of the things the cluster will be used for.



Alternatively, for other financial organisations the supercomputer requirement will be met by new implementations — within their own organisations — using the very latest technology providing maximum power and performance. It generally depends on the types of applications running, but many financial organisations are turning to cluster-based supercomputers using low cost blade servers.


Lastly, for “early supercomputer adopters,” an increase in computational power and performance will not come from new implementations or working in partnership with universities and colleges, but from driving greater efficiencies from existing third and fourth generation supercomputer implementations.

All approaches will demand greater storage capacity and instant storage scalability to keep pace with data generation and ensure storage does not become an innovation bottleneck.


In fact, IDC predicts in 2008 the average worldwide growth for the supercomputing storage market will actually be higher than for servers, about 11 percent. IDC expects the market for HPC storage to reach about $4.8 billion in 2008 (2006: $3.8 billion).


Working directly with universities and colleges aside, implementing a new supercomputer or aiming gain efficiencies from existing supercomputer implementations, is not without problems.



Super Problems


IT managers responsible for supercomputer implementations already operational in financial organisations are often faced with piece-meal implementations created by generations of predecessors each adding their own features and functionality to the overall supercomputer. This can include a mix of hardware, a plethora of in-house developed code running on old operating systems and a selection of proprietary applications and other software.


IT managers are also being held back by the management and structure of their data centres – as it becomes clear that there is not a limitless supply of energy, space and budgets to run an efficient data centre. For example, plugging yet another server into the datacentre is no longer an option for companies operating in Canary Wharf, where companies are facing major difficulties securing extra power.


Although some companies are currently unaffected by power shortages, the cost of powering and cooling a data centre is becoming a pressing concern. A study published by consultancy BroadGroup found that the average energy bill to run a corporate data centre in the UK is about £5.3m per year and will double to £11m over five years.


Data centres capable of hosting a supercomputer must also be able to take heat away from the site – increasingly fewer and fewer buildings can cope. And, most importantly, there is simply no space available in London — our financial capital — for expanding data centres. While there are old factories elsewhere in the country, there are limitations on their use for new facilities.


From a storage perspective, as Moore’s law continues to ramp up processor speed, the storage bottleneck is becoming more pronounced to the end users. In many cases, IT managers have been burdened with conventional storage technologies that require customisation before they can be effectively applied in supercomputing environments. And, even then, it does not mean the technology is fully capable of meeting supercomputing performance, accessibility, capacity and availability requirements.


Finally, as data centre managers look to provide an IT infrastructure that can cost-effectively scale to meet rapidly changing business requirements, they are also evaluating switching and interconnect technology and realising, in many cases, whilst servers and storage may be suitable, the data transport mechanism between each is lagging behind.



Solution


For financial organisations either undertaking a new implementation or aiming to optimise an existing implementation, it is essential to take some precautionary steps:



1. Prepare and plan properly


Financial organisations must analyse and build a plan that considers current and future needs of the supercomputer in terms of power, cooling, space, effects on the environment, costs and management.
Naturally, it is equally important to consider user requirements for the supercomputer, including the need for future scalability and upgrades.



2. Select a qualified integrator


Financial organisations should look for a specialist supercomputer integrator, one that demonstrates grade one credentials in the delivery of a supercomputing project. The following factors should always be taken into consideration:


Understand the customer. Supercomputer integrators must demonstrate a thorough understanding of their customers’ markets. Integrators must be able to understand what customers are trying to achieve, why their research or project is important and why they are trying to do it in that way.


Demonstrate history. As budgets grow and aggregate, customers are more wary and cautious of investment. Customers are looking for integrators with experience, a history and proven track record in delivering supercomputer solutions.


Hardware vendor relationship. In many instances, supercomputer solutions built for customers are firsts, fastest, largest and often unique. Some integrators will ‘play one hardware vendor off against the other’, or propose solutions based on hardware outside of the traditional Tier 1 manufacturers. However, when you’re working on the leading edge, problems can occur so it is essential for customers to know that integrators have a close and long-term relationship with the primary hardware supplier.


The HPC ecosystem. A single IT vendor cannot always supply the whole supercomputer solution – server, storage, interconnect, operating system, applications, etc. Customers therefore need a well connected integrator that can call on existing technology partner relationships to enhance solutions from the primary hardware vendor.


Technology innovation.

Customers look to integrators to provide solutions based on the best technology available. Integrators must therefore react to technology innovation quickly.
Protect the environment. Environmentally conscious customers will be looking for integrators that can meet not just their computing needs, but also their green needs and this means designing more complex solutions; for example using larger numbers of lower powered processors or vastly improved efficiency using virtualisation technology.



3. Make best use of technology


For any financial organisation looking to gain maximum power and performance from a new supercomputer server implementation (cost effectively) they should avoid proprietary hardware, which a manufacturer might choose to drop.



Servers

For server performance, it is also common sense for financial organisations to purchase blade server technology, which can use up to 50 percent less floor space in a data centre and up to 58 percent less energy than traditional servers.


For existing implementations, financial organisations should look for software, such as products from vendor Cluster Resources, that will help drive efficiencies and performance from existing cluster operations.



Software


The software can take full responsibility for scheduling, managing, monitoring and reporting of cluster workloads, maximising job throughput.


Storage

New supercomputers have a pick of storage technologies: RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks), SAN (Storage Area Network), NAS (Network Attached Storage), HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management), tape libraries and silos.


Perhaps more important than the choice of storage hardware, financial organisations should introduce a scalable, high performance file system with Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) capabilities, such as IBM’s General Parallel File System (GPFS), to keep up with the demands of real time data processing.


GPFS enables additional storage capacity and performance to be added and operational in minutes with no interruption to users or applications, scaling to multiple petabytes with hundreds of gigabytes per second performance. Once the data has been processed, it can be seamlessly relocated to lower cost storage for archiving, providing the financial organisations with a single easy-to-manage pool of resources.


Interconnect


IT managers should also carefully consider switching and interconnect technology. Currently, an interconnect battle rages between InfiniBand and 10 GigE. IDC expects the use of both of these high-speed interconnect technologies to grow.


A pervasive, low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnect, Infiniband is backed by a steering committee made up of the world’s leading IT vendors, and is expected to win the battle.


Management


There are not many IT departments that have in-depth knowledge and experience of supercomputer systems. Without assistance from external suppliers it can take considerably longer to get equipment up and running, upgrades complete, software in place and systems configured to drive maximum power and performance.


Taking into consideration commercial confidentiality and data security, financial organisations should consider Cluster Management and Support Services — outsourced support operations — which enable financial organisations to focus all available IT department resources on non-cluster related queries and user problems.


Conclusion

Whether your financial organisation is aiming for a new implementation or to drive efficiency from an existing implementation, whether you have legacy problems or a green field site, one thing is certain: financial organisations can use the power and performance of a supercomputer to help deliver the most accurate, comprehensive and actionable intelligence, providing that all important competitive advantage.
___________________________________________

This is indeed to where all disposable income investments are going. When we say an end of US national sovereignty brings an end to US FED and a US Wall Street----this will be the result-----there will be no public stock options in which main street citizens will be allowed to invest...all of those MANDATORY DEDUCTIONS called Social Security and 401K savings accounts will be lumped into one global long-term portfolio calling this 99% CITIZENS' INVESTMENT AND RETIREMENT ACCOUNTS. The money will not exist and the chances of anyone seeing those benefits are next to none. The WORLD CENTRAL BANK COMPUTER MATHEMATICAL MODELING will send monthly statements to where these accounts are in this captured system.

Meanwhile, the global 1% and their 2% have real money-----make real investments-----just as has existed in developed nations for centuries.


While global Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations shout for more control in development----they are silent about MOVING FORWARD WORLD CENTRAL BANK and they KNOW that is to where those CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA pols and players are taking WE THE PEOPLE THE 99%.

The global 1% are doing this to eliminate all that GREED AND PANIC created from massive Wall Street frauds by the same few people creating these frauds......

'Thus we have the classic case of "greed vs. panic."'

The One Super Stock For Everyone's Long-Term Portfolio


Jul.17.17 | About: MasterCard Incorporated (MA)

Mycroft Friedrich
Research analyst, newsletter provider, contrarian, long-term horizon

SummaryMain Street analysis of the company.


Industry analysis going out to 2025.


Capital Appreciation through capital preservation.


Recently I was asked by a client if I had to choose one stock out of the 17,000 stocks that our Friedrich Global Research analyzes (from 36 countries) which one would it be? The answer without a doubt is MasterCard (MA) and the following should explain why.
As a long term investor, the first thing you want to concentrate on is in finding companies that have little in the way of competition or what Warren Buffett calls a "moat" or "toll bridge". The industry that MasterCard operates in has very few players in it (as shown in the illustration below).

In 2016 MasterCard and Visa (V) handled 80% of all purchase transactions using global cards and MasterCard's volume grew 12.7% from the year prior. Visa is another stock that I also own in our client portfolios and even though it handled twice the transaction volume of MasterCard, its numbers (from a free cash flow point of view) are not as attractive as MasterCard's are.


Free cash flow analysis is the most powerful tool that any investor can use in order to get down to the real story behind what is really happening on Main Street. As a free cash flow analyst, 99% of my work is done on Main Street as Main Street is where MasterCard invests in its own operations. How well Ajaypal S. Banga (CEO of MasterCard) and management do in running those operations determines how profitable the company will be. Wall Street then reacts based on the success or failure of management to meet its goals. Main Street and Wall Street are thus interlinked, but because anyone with a computer, an internet connection and a brokerage account can buy or sell any stock at any time, expertise is not a requirement in order to invest on Wall Street. This results in Wall Street being a very dangerous place to operate in as many investors tend to operate through emotion or tend to follow the herd in and out of stocks. During bull markets, investors feel like they can do no wrong as "the rising tide lifts all boats." But when a bear market suddenly shows up, these same investors tend to panic and like lemmings stampede over the cliff. Thus we have the classic case of "greed vs. panic."

_________________________________________

Here is that GLOBAL GREEN TECHNOLOGY drive----ONE WORLD ONE TECHNOLOGY ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK....  The amount of energy needed for all these global technology transactions drives CLIMATE CHANGE.  It is the manufacturing of computer hardware, software, infrastructure cables, batteries, et al over these few decades that has CLIMATE CHANGE SOARING-----and it is MOVING FORWARD SMART CITIES WORLD CENTRAL BANK that expands this same industrialization.  As we hear a WORLD BANK CEO tell us he fears for his loved ones and their future in calling for GLOBAL CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY------FOR THE GLOBAL 1%----we can bet WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% will be busy being thrown in global labor pool to live in Foreign Economic Zones known to become most inhabitable.


The REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVE action is STOPPING GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS development---stop Foreign Economic Zone policies----stop online banking and continuing loss of economic control by our US cities, states, and federal governance.

'Most AI requires massive amounts of computing power and massive amounts of data. While some of that can be shifted from the cloud to devices, especially where latency and secure coverage are essential (autonomous driving), there are still significant limitations for what can be done locally'.

1. Supercomputer maker Cray cutting 14% of workforce, 190 jobs ...www.geekwire.com/2017/supercomputer-maker-cray-cutting-14-workforce-seeking-save-25m-per-year/ Jul 19, 2017 ... Seattle supercomputer maker Cray plans to cut 190 jobs, ... maker Cray cutting 14% of workforce, 190 jobs, seeking to save $25M per year.
   
   We have shouted for over a decade this march to SMART CITIES and especially global online banking will end in mass unemployment as we see fewer people hired and those few people often let go in very short time spans.  It gets far worse.
   
   Who is bound tightly to all these global banking schemes?  OUR US INTERNATIONAL LABOR UNIONS.  They are pushing MOVING FORWARD just ready to organize the next incoming global labor pool.    Here we see our FEDERAL/STATE EMPLOYEES CREDIT UNION AND OUR MILITARY DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE leading in moving everyone to online banking.  This is from where the bulk of online banking users come.
   
   
   Our international labor unions which should be fighting these captures of all economic policies are of course partnered now with global banking.  Who did AFSCME come out early to support? MOVING FORWARD HILLARY. Our labor union members need to WAKE UP as to how union leaders are leading WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% off a cliff.
   
   NerdWallet’s Best Credit Union Credit Cards of 2017
   Ben Luthi
   With so many websites offering free financial tools, it can be hard to know whom to trust. At NerdWallet, we spend literally 1,000s of hours researching partner offers and following strict editorial integrity to match you with the perfect choice. We even share how we make money so you can enjoy our expert advice and researched recommendations with total clarity and confidence.Credit union credit cards aren’t known for huge sign-up bonuses and luxury perks, but the Nerds have found a few that can compete with some of the best credit cards on the market in terms of rewards and other benefits. Not to mention, you’ll generally get better service with a credit union than a national bank.
   Let’s dig in.
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   Rewards for militaryGorewardsBest for travel
   
   
   
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3. Drawbacks of the Premium Travel Rewards:
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5. It doesn’t offer bonus rewards on travel-related purchases besides airfare.
6. You have to be a member of PenFed Credit Union. There are several paths to eligibility; you must:
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   If your travel expenses are skewed toward airfare purchases, the Premium Travel Rewards may be for you. But if you spend more on other travel-related purchases or you plan on using the card overseas, these travel cards may be more worth your time.
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1. Bottom line
   The Nerds don’t recommend carrying a balance on your credit card, but the Lake Michigan Credit Union Prime Platinum Visa is your best option if you don’t have a choice. The eligibility hurdle isn’t too high, and you can even transfer a balance from another card to get a break on interest. Note, however, that there are other cards that may be better suited for a balance transfer.
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   Digital Federal Credit Union Visa Platinum Secured Credit Card(3)
   on Digital Federal Credit Union's secure site
2. Recommended Credit Score
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5. Drawbacks of the Digital Federal Credit Union Visa Platinum Secured Credit Card:
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10. Benefits of the Gorewards:

 

1. Offers big rewards on dining and gas purchases.
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3. Drawbacks of the Gorewards:
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5. It’s not a good choice for people who don’t eat out or drive frequently.
6. You must become a member of Navy Federal Credit Union to apply. To be eligible, you must meet one of two criteria:
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   • Have a family member or housemate who is already a NFCU member.

1. Bottom line
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   MethodologyNerdWallet’s credit cards team selects the best cards in each category based on overall consumer value. Factors in our evaluation include fees, promotional and ongoing APRs, and sign-up bonuses; for rewards cards, we consider earning and redemption rates, redemption options and redemption difficulty. A single card is eligible to be chosen in multiple categories.
2. Last updated Dec. 31, 2016.
3. Bottom line
   The Digital Federal Credit Union Visa Platinum Secured Credit Card isn’t like other secured cards. Rather than imposing high fees and a low credit limit, it gives you the flexibility you need to dig yourself out of a financial hole and doesn’t punish you for being there. This credit union’s eligibility requirements are a little more stringent than PenFed’s or Lake Michigan’s. However, if you don’t already qualify for membership, you can join any of the participating organizations when you start your membership.
   Best rewards for military

________________________________________


This is the problem for REAL LEFT SOCIAL PROGRESSIVES and indeed all US 99%-----here we have two candidates Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders one calling himself LIBERTARIAN the other calling himself a left socialist-----BOTH CALLING FOR END THE FED.

As we said yesterday-----someone saying END THE US FED is very likely meaning to end US FED to make way for WORLD CENTRAL BANK.  Bernie and Rand Paul are morphing into that far-right wing global corporate campus socialism ----with ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE WORLD CENTRAL BANK.  LIBERTARIAN MARXISM.  These stances are not REAL RIGHT WING LIBERTARIAN and they are not REAL LEFT SOCIALISM -----the national media is simply pretending that is who these pols are.

We can only END THE FED by growing REAL 99% leaders---from left and right----from our local and state elections.  We cannot do that until we FIX ELECTIONS----we cannot FIX ELECTIONS until we GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS with rolling protests for weeks and months demanding these 5% global Wall Street players GO.


Jill Stein and the Global Green Corporation Party is END THE FED too----and they are ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE WORLD CENTRAL BANK. Please do not allow another generation of global 1% players capture our politics and governance.


We will end the problems of US FED and US Wall Street with MOVING FORWARD----losing national sovereignty will kill those entities---don't feel badl for those Wall Street CEOs ===they will enfold into global hedge funds and WORLD CENTRAL BANK.



THE BLOG
02/17/2016 09:15 am ET | Updated Feb 17, 2017

Will Bernie Sanders End the Fed?
By Larry Harris Jr.

ASSOCIATED PRESS


While Ron Paul made the Federal Reserve System a topic of conversation during the 2008 presidential cycle, there has not been much talk of the Fed in either the Democrats’ or Republicans’ debates. At one Democratic debate the subject came up and the candidate I’m supporting, Bernie Sanders, said that he supports auditing the Fed. He has also supported Senator Rand Paul’s bills to audit the Fed in the past. He should say more about his ideas for the Fed. The Fed controls inflation — a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. If Senator Sanders wants to fight against a system rigged against the little guy, he would be wise to spend some time thinking about ending the Fed.



It is no secret among my friends that when I was a performer I performed several times for Occupy Miami. People went to Occupy for their own reasons individually I found — one of the movement’s biggest strengths and weaknesses. I did not agree with everything I heard espoused at Occupy rallies, but one idea that I deeply believe in I heard kicked around many times: it is time to end the Federal Reserve System.


Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913 creating the Federal Reserve System. Many people say he would go on to regret his decision to do so because of the power it gave to bankers. Historically many U.S. presidents were against the idea of a strong central bank.

Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:




If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs



My favorite president, John F. Kennedy, tried to launch a metals backed currency in the U.S. to compete with the Fed’s dollars with Executive Order 11110. Our money is fiat money. It only has value through backing by the full faith and credit of the United States. Kennedy sought to base our currency on silver, where the valuation of the dollar would be based on market fluctuations rather than the whims of the central bank.

Because the Fed controls the value of the dollar, investment in the United States is viewed as a more risky proposition than if the dollar were backed by metal. We have a floating dollar where the value of an investment may decrease over time due to a decrease in the value of the dollar. A more stable dollar leads to a more predictable outcome. More predictable outcomes lead to more investment flowing into the U.S.



The Fed also makes trillions of dollars in loans to Wall Street, which keeps Wall Street in power as an overwhelming economic force. Wall Street’s business model depends on the Fed loaning them money at an extremely low interest rate (often zero!) to stay in business. If Wall Street, a very powerful player in American life, needs this type of corporate welfare to stay afloat, perhaps they should try a better business.


I have heard Bernie Sanders speak eloquently and passionately about fixing our economy, regulating Wall Street and creating a more fair system for the middle and lower class. I have not heard a lot from him about a sure way to bring balance back to America — ending the Fed. While it is not likely that he will adopt that position during the campaign, I hope he will in the future consider taking strong action against central banking. No friend of the big banks, surely this is an idea right up Sanders’ alley.

___________________________________________

This is a great example of what has been planned for decades ----the end of the ROBBER BARON period and the collapse of America. We see a few things here----OBAMA'S NEW DEAL was of course the dismantling of all FDR era New Deal ------the stock market rallies that occur just before any US economic crash signal that approaching swing. We looked at the headlines today for Wall Street stocks and of course we see all is soaring. That was what happened in 2008 just before that economic crash. What corporate gains is likely to be is DERIVATIVES BETS AGAINST THE BOND MARKET ====their corporate bond debt is huge. Know who gets the bond debt when crash comes? THE STOCK HOLDERS. So corporations are seeing record gains because they see massive movement of debt to WE THE PEOPLE.
Make no mistake---China is partnered with global banking in bringing US national economy down----it will not be the one responsible. It is the $20 trillion in US Treasury bond debt tied to expansive spending on building global corporate campuses globally---all that bond debt is building global corporate campuses----like UNDERARMOUR ----JOHNS HOPKINS----LOCKHEED MARTIN.

The $660 million city subsidy will pay for infrastructure, such as roads, parks and sewers. Sagamore will pay back the bonds through taxes, a practice known as tax increment financing.

This is for what our Mayor of Baltimore Catherine Pugh is waiting---her place in all this is to simply hand all Baltimore City over to global banking. Then we have no sovereign 'elected' official even though PUGH was installed with election fraud and rigging.
ENDING THE US FED is still the objective of WE THE 99% OF PEOPLE. Throughout this KABUKI THEATER of global banking coup against our government we must remember IT IS ALL ILLEGAL AND THESE FEW DECADES OF CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA POLICIES CAN BE VOIDED----all these US FED and US Treasury bond debt is FIAT MONEY---it doesn't exist. We must simply regain control of our local city and township governance and DEFAULT ON ILLEGAL BOND DEBT.

You see where Gold and Silver prices are soaring---who owns almost all gold and silver ---the global 1% and their 2%. We see HYPER-INFLATION hitting main street----that's what we get while corporations and the rich are winning bets on a planned US Treasury and corporate bond market collapse.

 Empty food shelves is a first step of these hyper-inflation planned economic crashes----Mugabe did the same when he first came to office. Please don't allow violence to occur between black, white, and brown 99% ----hold those 5% black, white, brown global Wall Street pols and players responsible for this slow walk to US economic collapse.



END THE FED This is what a financial collapse will look like

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'Thomas Jefferson said, “If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”'

Below we see the likely story behind JFK and RFK's assassination-----remember, the US FED as with FDR and Robber Baron Presidents back in 1913 who installed this US FED were OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% FREEMASONS.  Most Americans have some understanding that in 1913 the US FED  printed the images on the DOLLAR BILL that are known MASONIC SIGNS----THE PYRAMID WITH THE ONE EYE is that masonic symbol---this is the point the global 1% freemasons took hold of our US economy.  If we continue to be afraid of what are a 5% to the 1% ----we cannot rebuild America----THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR BUT FEAR ITSELF!

LET'S GET RID OF GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS, GET RID OF THE US FED----AND REBUILD OUR LOCAL US ECONOMIES.

WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% no longer need wait for an act of Congress or President to take action----the governance system is corrupt and criminal we simply need to act locally across the nation taking these steps to get OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE FREEMASONRY and its US FED and Wall Street out of our government.

This is a very long article but please glance through--it is critical to understand these financial policies.


Thoughts about Gold, Silver, and other stuff




Think Outside the Bank
It almost became money: United States Notes versus Federal Reserve Notes

John F. Kennedy vs The Federal Reserve
Anthony Wayne

On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. The Christian Law Fellowship has exhaustively researched this matter through the Federal Register and Library of Congress. We can now safely conclude that this Executive Order has never been repealed, amended, or superceded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid.


When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the author of Profiles in Courage -signed this Order, it returned to the federal government, specifically the Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency -money – without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. President Kennedy’s Executive Order 11110 [the full text is displayed further below] gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.” This means that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation based on the silver bullion physically held there. As a result, more than $4 billion in United States Notes were brought into circulation in $2 and $5 denominations. $10 and $20 United States Notes were never circulated but were being printed by the Treasury Department when Kennedy was assassinated. It appears obvious that President Kennedy knew the Federal Reserve Notes being used as the purported legal currency were contrary to the Constitution of the united States of America.



FED NOTE



US NOTE

United States Notes” were issued as an interest-free and debt-free currency backed by silver reserves in the U.S. Treasury. We compared a “Federal Reserve Note” issued from the private central bank of the United States (the Federal Reserve Bank a/k/a Federal Reserve System), with a “United States Note” from the U.S. Treasury issued by President Kennedy’s Executive Order. They almost look alike, except one says “Federal Reserve Note” on the top while the other says “United States Note”. Also, the Federal Reserve Note has a green seal and serial number while the United States Note has a red seal and serial number.



President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 and the United States Notes he had issued were immediately taken out of circulation. Federal Reserve Notes continued to serve as the legal currency of the nation. According to the United States Secret Service, 99% of all U.S. paper “currency” circulating in 1999 are Federal Reserve Notes.



Kennedy knew that if the silver-backed United States Notes were widely circulated, they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve Notes. This is a very simple matter of economics. The USN was backed by silver and the FRN was not backed by anything of intrinsic value. Executive Order 11110 should have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level (virtually all of the over $9 trillion in federal debt has been created since 1963) if LBJ or any subsequent President were to enforce it. It would have almost immediately given the U.S. Government the ability to repay its debt without going to the private Federal Reserve Banks and being charged interest to create new “money”. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S.A. the ability to, once again, create its own money backed by silver and realm value worth something.


Again, according to our own research, just five months after Kennedy was assassinated, no more of the Series 1958 “Silver Certificates” were issued either, and they were subsequently removed from circulation. Perhaps the assassination of JFK was a warning to all future presidents not to interfere with the private Federal Reserve’s control over the creation of money. It seems very apparent that President Kennedy challenged the “powers that exist behind U.S. and world finance”. With true patriotic courage, JFK boldly faced the two most successful vehicles that have ever been used to drive up debt:


1) war (Viet Nam); and,
2) the creation of money by a privately owned central bank. His efforts to have all U.S. troops out of Vietnam by 1965 combined with Executive Order 11110 would have destroyed the profits and control of the private Federal Reserve Bank.



Executive Order 11110


AMENDMENT OF EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 10289 AS AMENDED, RELATING TO THE PERFORMANCE OF CERTAIN FUNCTIONS AFFECTING THE DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY. By virtue of the authority vested in me by section 301 of title 3 of the United States Code, it is ordered as follows:


SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 19, 1951, as amended, is hereby further amended – (a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following subparagraph (j): “(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section 43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821 (b)), to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption of any outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and subsidiary silver currency for their redemption,” and (b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof. SECTION 2. The amendment made by this Order shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as if said amendments had not been made.



JOHN F. KENNEDY THE WHITE HOUSE, June 4, 1963


Once again, Executive Order 11110 is still valid. According to Title 3, United States Code, Section 301 dated January 26, 1998:
Executive Order (EO) 10289 dated Sept. 17, 1951, 16 F.R. 9499, was as amended by:


EO 10583, dated December 18, 1954, 19 F.R. 8725;
EO 10882 dated July 18, 1960, 25 F.R. 6869;
EO 11110 dated June 4, 1963, 28 F.R. 5605;
EO 11825 dated December 31, 1974, 40 F.R. 1003;
EO 12608 dated September 9, 1987, 52 F.R. 34617



The 1974 and 1987 amendments, added after Kennedy’s 1963 amendment, did not change or alter any part of Kennedy’s EO 11110. A search of Clinton‘s 1998 and 1999 EO’s and Presidential Directives has also shown no reference to any alterations, suspensions, or changes to EO 11110.



The Federal Reserve Bank, a.k.a Federal Reserve System, is a Private Corporation. Black’s Law Dictionary defines the “Federal Reserve System” as: “Network of twelve central banks to which most national banks belong and to which state chartered banks may belong. Membership rules require investment of stock and minimum reserves.” Privately-owned banks own the stock of the FED. This was explained in more detail in the case of Lewis v. United States, Federal Reporter, 2nd Series, Vol. 680, Pages 1239, 1241 (1982), where the court said: “Each Federal Reserve Bank is a separate corporation owned by commercial banks in its region. The stock-holding commercial banks elect two thirds of each Bank’s nine member board of directors”.



The Federal Reserve Banks are locally controlled by their member banks. Once again, according to Black’s Law Dictionary, we find that these privately owned banks actually issue money:



“Federal Reserve Act. Law which created Federal Reserve banks which act as agents in maintaining money reserves, issuing money in the form of bank notes, lending money to banks, and supervising banks. Administered by Federal Reserve Board (q.v.)”.
The privately owned Federal Reserve (FED) banks actually issue (create) the “money” we use. In 1964, the House Committee on Banking and Currency, Subcommittee on Domestic Finance, at the second session of the 88th Congress, put out a study entitled Money Facts which contains a good description of what the FED is: “The Federal Reserve is a total money-making machine. It can issue money or checks. And it never has a problem of making its checks good because it can obtain the $5 and $10 bills necessary to cover its check simply by asking the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Engraving to print them”.


Any one person or any closely knit group who has a lot of money has a lot of power. Now imagine a group of people who have the power to create money. Imagine the power these people would have. This is exactly what the privately owned FED is!



No man did more to expose the power of the FED than Louis T. McFadden, who was the Chairman of the House Banking Committee back in the 1930s. In describing the FED, he remarked in the Congressional Record, House pages 1295 and 1296 on June 10, 1932:



“Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government Board, has cheated the Government of the United States and he people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and the iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal reserve banks acting together have cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States; has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the maladministration of that law by which the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it”.



Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are not Government institutions, departments, or agencies. They are private credit monopolies which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. Those 12 private credit monopolies were deceitfully placed upon this country by bankers who came here from Europe and who repaid us for our hospitality by undermining our American institutions.



The FED basically works like this:


The government granted its power to create money to the FED banks. They create money, then loan it back to the government charging interest. The government levies income taxes to pay the interest on the debt. On this point, it’s interesting to note that the Federal Reserve Act and the sixteenth amendment, which gave congress the power to collect income taxes, were both passed in 1913. The incredible power of the FED over the economy is universally admitted. Some people, especially in the banking and academic communities, even support it. On the other hand, there are those, such as President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, that have spoken out against it. His efforts were spoken about in Jim Marrs’ 1990 book Crossfire:”



Another overlooked aspect of Kennedy’s attempt to reform American society involves money. Kennedy apparently reasoned that by returning to the constitution, which states that only Congress shall coin and regulate money, the soaring national debt could be reduced by not paying interest to the bankers of the Federal Reserve System, who print paper money then loan it to the government at interest. He moved in this area on June 4, 1963, by signing Executive Order 11110 which called for the issuance of $4,292,893,815 in United States Notes through the U.S. Treasury rather than the traditional Federal Reserve System. That same day, Kennedy signed a bill changing the backing of one and two dollar bills from silver to gold, adding strength to the weakened U.S. currency.



Kennedy’s comptroller of the currency, James J. Saxon, had been at odds with the powerful Federal Reserve Board for some time, encouraging broader investment and lending powers for banks that were not part of the Federal Reserve system. Saxon also had decided that non-Reserve banks could underwrite state and local general obligation bonds, again weakening the dominant Federal Reserve banks”.



In a comment made to a Columbia University class on Nov. 12, 1963,
Ten days before his assassination, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy allegedly said:



“The high office of the President has been used to foment a plot to destroy the American’s freedom and before I leave office, I must inform the citizen of this plight.”


In this matter, John Fitzgerald Kennedy appears to be the subject of his own book… a true Profile of Courage.


This research report was compiled for Lawgiver. Org. by Anthony Wayne




What is the Federal Reserve Bank?



What is the Federal Reserve Bank (FED) and why do we have it?


by Greg Hobbs November 1, 1999

The FED is a central bank. Central banks are supposed to implement a country’s fiscal policies. They monitor commercial banks to ensure that they maintain sufficient assets, like cash, so as to remain solvent and stable. Central banks also do business, such as currency exchanges and gold transactions, with other central banks. In theory, a central bank should be good for a country, and they might be if it wasn’t for the fact that they are not owned or controlled by the government of the country they are serving. Private central banks, including our FED, operate not in the interest of the public good but for profit.

There have been three central banks in our nation’s history. The first two, while deceptive and fraudulent, pale in comparison to the scope and size of the fraud being perpetrated by our current FED. What they all have in common is an insidious practice known as “fractional banking.”

Fractional banking or fractional lending is the ability to create money from nothing, lend it to the government or someone else and charge interest to boot. The practice evolved before banks existed. Goldsmiths rented out space in their vaults to individuals and merchants for storage of their gold or silver. The goldsmiths gave these “depositors” a certificate that showed the amount of gold stored. These certificates were then used to conduct business.

In time the goldsmiths noticed that the gold in their vaults was rarely withdrawn. Small amounts would move in and out but the large majority never moved. Sensing a profit opportunity, the goldsmiths issued double receipts for the gold, in effect creating money (certificates) from nothing and then lending those certificates (creating debt) to depositors and charging them interest as well.

Since the certificates represented more gold than actually existed, the certificates were “fractionally” backed by gold. Eventually some of these vault operations were transformed into banks and the practice of fractional banking continued.

Keep that fractional banking concept in mind as we examine our first central bank, the First Bank of the United States (BUS). It was created, after bitter dissent in the Congress, in 1791 and chartered for 20 years. A scam not unlike the current FED, the BUS used its control of the currency to defraud the public and establish a legal form of usury.

This bank practiced fractional lending at a 10:1 rate, ten dollars of loans for each dollar they had on deposit. This misuse and abuse of their public charter continued for the entire 20 years of their existence. Public outrage over these abuses was such that the charter was not renewed and the bank ceased to exist in 1811.

The war of 1812 left the country in economic chaos, seen by bankers as another opportunity for easy profits. They influenced Congress to charter the second central bank, the Second Bank of the United States (SBUS), in 1816.

The SBUS was more expansive than the BUS. The SBUS sold franchises and literally doubled the number of banks in a short period of time. The country began to boom and move westward, which required money. Using fractional lending at the 10:1 rate, the central bank and their franchisees created the debt/money for the expansion.

Things boomed for a while, then the banks decided to shut off the debt/money, citing the need to control inflation. This action on the part of the SBUS caused bankruptcies and foreclosures. The banks then took control of the assets that were used as security against the loans.

Closely examine how the SBUS engineered this cycle of prosperity and depression. The central bank caused inflation by creating debt/money for loans and credit and making these funds readily available. The economy boomed. Then they used the inflation which they created as an excuse to shut off the loans/credit/money.

The resulting shortage of cash caused the economy to falter or slow dramatically and large numbers of business and personal bankruptcies resulted. The central bank then seized the assets used as security for the loans. The wealth created by the borrowers during the boom was then transferred to the central bank during the bust. And you always wondered how the big guys ended up with all the marbles.

Now, who do you think is responsible for all of the ups and downs in our economy over the last 85 years? Think about the depression of the late ’20s and all through the ’30s. The FED could have pumped lots of debt/money into the market to stimulate the economy and get the country back on track, but did they? No; in fact, they restricted the money supply quite severely. We all know the results that occurred from that action, don’t we?

Why would the FED do this? During that period asset values and stocks were at rock bottom prices. Who do you think was buying everything at 10 cents on the dollar? I believe that it is referred to as consolidating the wealth. How many times have they already done this in the last 85 years?

Do you think they will do it again?


Just as an aside at this point, look at today’s economy. Markets are declining. Why? Because the FED has been very liberal with its debt/credit/money. The market was hyper inflated. Who creates inflation? The FED. How does the FED deal with inflation? They restrict the debt/credit/money. What happens when they do that? The market collapses.


Several months back, after certain central banks said they would be selling large quantities of gold, the price of gold fell to a 25-year low of about $260 per ounce. The central banks then bought gold. After buying at the bottom, a group of 15 central banks announced that they would be restricting the amount of gold released into the market for the next five years. The price of gold went up $75.00 per ounce in just a few days. How many hundreds of billions of dollars did the central banks make with those two press releases?


Gold is generally considered to be a hedge against more severe economic conditions. Do you think that the private banking families that own the FED are buying or selling equities at this time? (Remember: buy low, sell high.) How much money do you think these FED owners have made since they restricted the money supply at the top of this last current cycle?


Alan Greenspan has said publicly on several occasions that he thinks the market is overvalued, or words to that effect. Just a hint that he will raise interest rates (restrict the money supply), and equity markets have a negative reaction. Governments and politicians do not rule central banks, central banks rule governments and politicians. President Andrew Jackson won the presidency in 1828 with the promise to end the national debt and eliminate the SBUS. During his second term President Jackson withdrew all government funds from the bank and on January 8, 1835, paid off the national debt. He is the only president in history to have this distinction. The charter of the SBUS expired in 1836.


Without a central bank to manipulate the supply of money, the United States experienced unprecedented growth for 60 or 70 years, and the resulting wealth was too much for bankers to endure. They had to get back into the game. So, in 1910 Senator Nelson Aldrich, then Chairman of the National Monetary Commission, in collusion with representatives of the European central banks, devised a plan to pressure and deceive Congress into enacting legislation that would covertly establish a private central bank.


This bank would assume control over the American economy by controlling the issuance of its money. After a huge public relations campaign, engineered by the foreign central banks, the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was slipped through Congress during the Christmas recess, with many members of the Congress absent. President Woodrow Wilson, pressured by his political and financial backers, signed it on December 23, 1913.


The act created the Federal Reserve System, a name carefully selected and designed to deceive. “Federal” would lead one to believe that this is a government organization. “Reserve” would lead one to believe that the currency is being backed by gold and silver. “System” was used in lieu of the word “bank” so that one would not conclude that a new central bank had been created.


In reality, the act created a private, for profit, central banking corporation owned by a cartel of private banks. Who owns the FED? The Rothschilds of London and Berlin; Lazard Brothers of Paris; Israel Moses Seif of Italy; Kuhn, Loeb and Warburg of Germany; and the Lehman Brothers, Goldman, Sachs and the Rockefeller families of New York.


Did you know that the FED is the only for-profit corporation in America that is exempt from both federal and state taxes? The FED takes in about one trillion dollars per year tax free! The banking families listed above get all that money.


Almost everyone thinks that the money they pay in taxes goes to the US Treasury to pay for the expenses of the government. Do you want to know where your tax dollars really go? If you look at the back of any check made payable to the IRS you will see that it has been endorsed as “Pay Any F.R.B. Branch or Gen. Depository for Credit U.S. Treas. This is in Payment of U.S. Oblig.” Yes, that’s right, every dime you pay in income taxes is given to those private banking families, commonly known as the FED, tax free.


Like many of you, I had some difficulty with the concept of creating money from nothing. You may have heard the term “monetizing the debt,” which is kind of the same thing. As an example, if the US Government wants to borrow $1 million ó the government does borrow every dollar it spends ó they go to the FED to borrow the money. The FED calls the Treasury and says print 10,000 Federal Reserve Notes (FRN) in units of one hundred dollars.


The Treasury charges the FED 2.3 cents for each note, for a total of $230 for the 10,000 FRNs. The FED then lends the $1 million to the government at face value plus interest. To add insult to injury, the government has to create a bond for $1 million as security for the loan. And the rich get richer. The above was just an example, because in reality the FED does not even print the money; it’s just a computer entry in their accounting system. To put this on a more personal level, let’s use another example.



Today’s banks are members of the Federal Reserve Banking System. This membership makes it legal for them to create money from nothing and lend it to you. Today’s banks, like the goldsmiths of old, realize that only a small fraction of the money deposited in their banks is ever actually withdrawn in the form of cash. Only about 4 percent of all the money that exists is in the form of currency. The rest of it is simply a computer entry.


Let’s say you’re approved to borrow $10,000 to do some home improvements. You know that the bank didn’t actually take $10,000 from its pile of cash and put it into your pile? They simply went to their computer and input an entry of $10,000 into your account. They created, from thin air, a debt which you have to secure with an asset and repay with interest. The bank is allowed to create and lend as much debt as they want as long as they do not exceed the 10:1 ratio imposed by the FED.


It sort of puts a new slant on how you view your friendly bank, doesn’t it? How about those loan committees that scrutinize you with a microscope before approving the loan they created from thin air. What a hoot! They make it complex for a reason. They don’t want you to understand what they are doing. People fear what they do not understand. You are easier to delude and control when you are ignorant and afraid.


Now to put the frosting on this cake. When was the income tax created? If you guessed 1913, the same year that the FED was created, you get a gold star. Coincidence? What are the odds? If you are going to use the FED to create debt, who is going to repay that debt? The income tax was created to complete the illusion that real money had been lent and therefore real money had to be repaid. And you thought Houdini was good.



So, what can be done? My father taught me that you should always stand up for what is right, even if you have to stand up alone.


If “We the People” don’t take some action now, there may come a time when “We the People” are no more. You should write a letter or send an email to each of your elected representatives. Many of our elected representatives do not understand the FED. Once informed they will not be able to plead ignorance and remain silent.


Article 1, Section 8 of the US Constitution specifically says that Congress is the only body that can “coin money and regulate the value thereof.” The US Constitution has never been amended to allow anyone other than Congress to coin and regulate currency.


Ask your representative, in light of that information, how it is possible for the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and the Federal Reserve Bank that it created, to be constitutional. Ask them why this private banking cartel is allowed to reap trillions of dollars in profits without paying taxes. Insist on an answer.



Thomas Jefferson said, “If the America people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currencies, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their prosperity until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”


Jefferson saw it coming 150 years ago. The question is, “Can you now see what is in store for us if we allow the FED to continue controlling our country?”

We showed an article at the beginning of this discussion on WORLD CENTRAL BANK the plan to start the consolidation of central banks with Euro Central meeting Japan Central.  Our US Central is basically controlled by those OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE EUROPEAN 1% so we would fold in with Euro creating a large start to WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

'European governments have targeted 1992 for abolishing individual European currencies and replacing them with the European Currency Unit, the ECU. Next they plan to set up a European central bank. The next step is the merger of the Federal Reserve, the European central bank, and the Bank of Japan into one world central bank'.

Japan has been captured by global banking since WW2 and is a puppet neo-liberal state whatever WORLD BANK says Japan does.  We see Japan is heading for 2% inflation printing lots of money to get there.  Mugabe in Zimbabwe did the same and created HYPER-INFLATION such that everyone in the nation lost all wealth and citizens had no money.  Now, the US FED and its 2% rate increase tells us this will not happen in US----Japanese are being told the same----but global financial analysts all predict the US FED rate will go higher and the US as Japan will experience HYPER-INFLATION at the same time we hit an economic crash.

Below they tell us this is the beginning of the end of independent CENTRAL BANKS.


Since all national politicians are working for ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK breaking the independence of any nations' central bank is to MOVE FORWARD to consolidating these central banks with the WORLD CENTRAL BANK.  The Japanese Central Bank working with Japanese government on economic policies will lead to joining this ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK MODEL.

Bernanke and the US FED for the first time in US history and without legal direction allowed the FED to take on trillions of dollars in debt-----the toxic subprime loan buyback from global Wall Street banks soon heading to our US Treasury.  Basically our US FED tapped itself out while the US Treasury went to $20 trillion in national debt. 

THIS IS PAVING THE WAY TO DISSOLVING THAT NATIONAL CENTRAL BANK STRUCTURE MOVING FORWARD TO ONE WORLD WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

This is very complicated for our citizens new to public policy discussions but these US FEDERAL CENTRAL BANKS are tied to policy creating the economic stagnation in our US cities----the expansion of our corporations overseas----the constant global Wall Street frauds of our retirements, housing, pensions, and public trusts. These central banks are behind moving all wealth to the 1% killing our town and city economies.



The Bank of Japan is coordinating policy with the Japanese government. That is a big deal.

By Neil Irwin January 22, 2013


The Bank of Japan made a blockbuster announcement overnight, saying that after nearly two decades of economic stagnation and falling prices, it is aiming for 2 percent inflation and will print more yen on an unlimited scale—by the trillions, if necessary—to get there.


That alone is big news; the Japanese central bank has now joined the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank in pledging bottomless resources to address their respective economic crises. The Bank of Japan, under pressure from the newly elected government of Shinzo Abe, went a step further.

It released a joint statement with the government, pledging to “strengthen their policy coordination and work together” on a range of policies.

The Bank of Japan's policy committee made a giant leap Tuesday. (Japan pool/AFP/Getty Images)Jens Weidmann, the president of the German Bundesbank, sees in this and other developments the beginning of the end of the era of independent central banks.



“It is already possible to observe alarming infringements, for example in Hungary or in Japan, where the new government is massively involving itself in the affairs of the central bank, is emphatically demanding an even more aggressive monetary policy and is threatening an end to central bank autonomy,”

Weidmann said in a speech in Frankfurt Monday. Weidmann was polite enough, on this occasion at least, not to mention the ways the ECB has risked its independence by standing ready to backstop markets for European nations’ debt (an action on which Weidmann dissented.)


So, it’s worth asking, is the era of independent central banks over? And if so, does it matter?
The answers begin with understanding why central banks are given independence from political authorities to begin with. The idea is that elected officials, with their short time spans in office and limited technical knowledge, will forever be inclined to allow higher inflation in exchange for stronger growth and lower unemployment, and that over time this will significantly worsen the economy. The lesson of the 1970s was that you want your central bankers to have the power and leeway to take actions that will be unpopular (namely, raising interest rates to fight inflation) but will make your economy better off over the long run. The lessons learned in fighting inflation back then led to the modern age of independent central banks.


In other words, independence is a more recent phenomenon than you might think: The Bank of England gained legal independence in 1997; the central banks of France, Italy and many other Western European nations that aren’t Germany weren’t truly independent as late as the 1990s, when there began a push to create the ECB. The Federal Reserve gained independence in the 1951 Treasury-Fed accord, but sure didn’t act like it in the 1970s, when the Nixon administration used all manner of tools to encourage easy money policies out of the central bank (and resulting high inflation). It was Fed chief Paul Volcker’s willful leadership, serving in the Carter and Reagan administrations, that brought independence to the Fed in practice, if not in law.


The argument against independence in the current environment boils down to this: Different times call for different measures. In the 1970s, the real problem was that central banks were tolerating too much inflation amid both analytical mistakes and pressure from short-sighted politicians.


But now, the problem is that central banks around the world are near the “zero lower bound,” with short-term interest rates sitting ultra low. Their remaining tools to pump more money into the economy to encourage recovery seem to pack less punch than their usual management of interest rates. That might change, though, if the central banks’ policy of printing money and using it to buy bonds, known as quantitative easing, was matched by coordinated spending or tax cuts by governments.



Macroeconomists have long known that in a “liquidity trap,” like that underway in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, it could theoretically be better policy to turn the normal rules of central bank independence on their head. The institutional design that made sense for one era may not be the best for another.


But the problem is that institutions can’t turn on a dime. That is true of central banks, led by small-c conservative men and women, more than most. The Bank of Japan has been dealing with a deflationary world for nearly 20 years, and only now, amid new pressure from the government, is it committing to deeper coordination. The forays by the Fed and ECB into this unconventional terrain have been filled with reluctance and hand-wringing. And, indeed, if the policies are successful, and the major economies can get out of their liquidity traps in the next few years, the central banks could be laying the groundwork for a new bout of inflation -- if they aren't able to regain greater independence from political authorities when the world changes again.


But for the moment, central bank independence isn’t what it used to be, and that’s not entirely a bad thing.

_______________________
The liquidity trap was Nixon and FIAT MONEY setting the stage for all US wealth to be taken to the 1% that ERA as this article states was the ROBBER BARON ERA.  So, MACROECONOMISTS say its time to turn central banking on its head-----meaning WORLD CENTRAL BANKING.

'Macroeconomists have long known that in a “liquidity trap,” like that underway in the United States, Western Europe and Japan, it could theoretically be better policy to turn the normal rules of central bank independence on their head. The institutional design that made sense for one era may not be the best for another'.

Below we see TRUMP TURNING THE CENTRAL BANK ON ITS HEAD.

Trump brings in the YALE/STANFORD ECONOMISTS after these few decades of HARVARD/UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ECONOMISTS----  the neo-liberal economists fleeced America the neo-conservatives are now moving to what is a computer-generated analysis of who, what, when, where, and how economic policy should change over time.  This is the BIG ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HEAD we are now all supposed to WORSHIP.  All human interaction will be taken out of these economic standards ergo things will run smoothly.  Who programs the BIG FED HEAD?  The global 1%.

What this does is sets a platform for standardization globally with the goal of ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

This is obviously an article written by the right wing because it tells us these policies are written BY VERY SMART PEOPLE.  Very smart people would of course be able to use their minds to create a functioning economy for 99% of citizens and not ROBOTICS THINKING FOR A GLOBAL 1%.

These are the far-right wing extreme wealth extreme poverty guys-----they see nothing but inhabitable earth and planetary mining colonies in our future.

 We see how these same terms from World Bank to Trump are the same----Trump is simply MOVING FORWARD WORLD CENTRAL BANK.....but we thought Trump was a conservative Republican ----no he is a global Wall Street CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA-----------



Here is how Trump’s nominee for the Fed could turn central banking on its head


The Conversation
12 Jul 2017 at 11:33 ET                   

Randal Quarles (U. S. Treasury hard copy for G8 Summit)

President Donald Trump on July 10 nominated Randal Quarles to be one of the seven governors of the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States.

Before I get to Quarles and his qualifications, it’s important to understand the Fed and what it does. Its decisions are vital to every person on the planet who borrows or lends money (pretty much everybody) since it has enormous influence over global interest rates. Its board of governors also influences most other aspects of the global financial system, from regulating banks to how money is wired around the world.


Quarles, for his part, is clearly qualified for a job at the pinnacle of financial regulation. He has held numerous positions in the U.S. Treasury Department, including undersecretary for domestic finance under George W. Bush, and was the U.S. executive director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He has also worked on Wall Street for The Carlyle Group and founded his own investment company, The Cynosure Group. He also has a law degree from Yale.

The issue that I believe deserves careful scrutiny, however, does not involve his qualifications. Rather it’s a view of his that, if allowed to permeate the Fed, would represent a seismic shock to how the central bank operates and could potentially have severe consequences if – or when – we stumble into another financial crisis like the one we endured only a decade ago.


How the Fed controls the world

Currently, the Fed rules the financial world using a very simple model: A handful of very smart people sit together at least eight times a year and decide how to execute the country’s monetary policy.

The implications are enormous. In the words of the Fed itself, decisions made in these meetings:


“trigger a chain of events that affect other short-term interest rates, foreign exchange rates, long-term interest rates, the amount of money and credit and, ultimately, a range of economic variables, including employment, output and prices of goods and services.”


Janet Yellen currently chairs this group, called the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), and its decisions, like those of the Supreme Court, are final. There are few or no absolute rules, and there is no appeal.


Quarles, however, has described the discretionary decisions of this small group as “a crazy way to run a railroad.”

Instead, Quarles argues that the Fed should use a rules-based approach, with little or no discretion. Economic data would be plugged into a simple model, which would spit out the decision the Fed should take.


Since the model would be well-known and the relevant economic data (such as GDP, inflation rates, etc.) are already widely publicized, everyone from Wall Street to Main Street who cares about interest rates would be able to predict how the Fed is going to react under such a rules-based approach.


The Taylor rule

While Quarles has not specifically referred to which rule he would favor, a frequently cited one is called the “Taylor rule.”
It is named after Stanford economist John B. Taylor, who proposed it in 1993 as a new guiding principle for central bank decision-making. In recent years, the rule has gained much interest among people who watch and study the Fed.


The Taylor rule states that the Fed should establish short-term interest rates using a mathematical formula. It would use the current rate as a starting point and then factor in data tied to inflation and GDP, both based on the difference between the actual figures and the bank’s targets.


Since it would rely on a few human inputs from the Fed, the Taylor rule is somewhat flexible, enough to accommodate different situations by allowing central bankers to specify the importance of inflation compared with GDP growth.Inflation is an important variable because price changes impact people’s standard of living, while GDP growth affects the number of jobs available in the economy.


Some countries, like Germany, primarily focus on keeping inflation extremely low. Others, such as the U.S., try to balance both inflation and GDP growth roughly equally. Central banks in some developing countries like those in Africa often put stronger emphasis on boosting economic growth with less regard to inflation.

But that’s about as far it will stretch.


Why does this matter?


In general, the Taylor rule would lead central banks to increase interest rates when inflation is high or when unemployment is very low. Conversely, the rule indicates central banks should lower interest rates when inflation is too low (or there is deflation), when economic growth is poor or unemployment is climbing.


But therein lies the rub. Rules work well when things are “normal,” but when the unexpected happens, they become much less useful – even harmful.
If the Taylor rule were an effective and straightforward method of transforming complex choices into simple, easy-to-understand decisions, the question is, why doesn’t every central bank use this rule?


The answer is as simple as the Taylor rule itself. Sometimes a country faces an economic quandary, such as what the U.S. experienced during the oil price shocks of the late 1970s. Back then, inflation was too high and GDP growth was too low, leaving the country stuck in what is known as a period of stagflation.
In these circumstances, the Taylor rule breaks down. It tells central bankers there is nothing they can do to improve economic conditions. The rule signals that interest rates need to be raised to combat high inflation, yet at the same time that would weaken already-sluggish GDP growth.
Had the U.S. followed the Taylor rule back then, it would have done nothing. Instead, the Fed raised interest rates and broke the back of inflation expectations.


What’s crazier

Simply put, central bankers around the world – including those at the Fed – have not adopted rules-based monetary policy using the Taylor rule or another because in times of economic crisis, a simple precept usually fails to provide effective solutions.
The current ad-hoc approach provides maximum flexibility and allows central bankers to reach for untested methods that help them get the economy back on track.
Quarles may be right. It might be a crazy way to run a railroad. But then again, monetary policy – and the US$18.6 trillion U.S. economy – is a bit more complex than operating a train on a set of rails. The crazy thing might be to do it any other way.


By Jay L. Zagorsky, Economist and Research Scientist, The Ohio State University
______________________________________________
Now, this article is more than any average citizen would want to read----but it shows how global finance has moved to being completely computerized guided by mathematical PREDICTIONS.  This is to where all our MATH GEEKS have gone these few decades.  This 'crash' that plunged the world banks into catastrophe was the massive US Treasury bond debt fraud that will soon bring down US as well as most nations.

What global 1% are building is an extension of this----it is tied to the massive DERIVATIVES market----computers buy and sell stocks thousands a second making it impossible for any citizen to participate in a fair stock market.  This is what corrupted our US Wall Street beyond RECOGNITION.  It only works for those global 1% rich enough to afford the increasing complexity of technology needed.  IT IS CRAZY STUFF.

This is the model a BASEL BIC----or a WORLD BANK/IMF WORLD CENTRAL BANK would use.  It has no human input except from those 'SMALL GROUP OF REALLY SMART GUYS'.  WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% have watched these few decades as a CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA turned a stable national economy into havoc----MOVING FORWARD to this totally computerized economic model.  Know who is smarter?  The 99% have the talent and the brains---the global 1% need computer technology to do the work for them----they are simply talented at LYING, CHEATING, AND STEALING.  Global 99% of citizens will have absolutely no ability of voice or control of economics in their towns and cities.

This is why main street investors have had no way to know how to invest------only the top insider investment firms have the knowledge of how stocks will be BEAR AND BULL.

Too Fast to Fail: How High-Speed Trading Fuels Wall Street Disasters

Computer algorithms swap thousands of stocks each instant—and could set off a financial meltdown.Nick BaumannJanuary/February 2013 Issue




The mathematical equation that caused the banks to crash


The Black-Scholes equation was the mathematical justification for the trading that plunged the world's banks into catastrophe

In the Black-Scholes equation, the symbols represent these variables: σ = volatility of returns of the underlying asset/commodity; S = its spot (current) price; δ = rate of change; V = price of financial derivative; r = risk-free interest rate; t = time.

Photograph: Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Image


Saturday 11 February 2012 19.05 EST First published on Saturday 11 February 2012 19.05 EST
It was the holy grail of investors.

The Black-Scholes equation, brainchild of economists Fischer Black and Myron Scholes, provided a rational way to price a financial contract when it still had time to run. It was like buying or selling a bet on a horse, halfway through the race. It opened up a new world of ever more complex investments, blossoming into a gigantic global industry. But when the sub-prime mortgage market turned sour, the darling of the financial markets became the Black Hole equation, sucking money out of the universe in an unending stream.

Anyone who has followed the crisis will understand that the real economy of businesses and commodities is being upstaged by complicated financial instruments known as derivatives. These are not money or goods. They are investments in investments, bets about bets. Derivatives created a booming global economy, but they also led to turbulent markets, the credit crunch, the near collapse of the banking system and the economic slump. And it was the Black-Scholes equation that opened up the world of derivatives.


The equation itself wasn't the real problem. It was useful, it was precise, and its limitations were clearly stated. It provided an industry-standard method to assess the likely value of a financial derivative. So derivatives could be traded before they matured. The formula was fine if you used it sensibly and abandoned it when market conditions weren't appropriate. The trouble was its potential for abuse. It allowed derivatives to become commodities that could be traded in their own right. The financial sector called it the Midas Formula and saw it as a recipe for making everything turn to gold. But the markets forgot how the story of King Midas ended.

Black-Scholes underpinned massive economic growth. By 2007, the international financial system was trading derivatives valued at one quadrillion dollars per year. This is 10 times the total worth, adjusted for inflation, of all products made by the world's manufacturing industries over the last century. The downside was the invention of ever-more complex financial instruments whose value and risk were increasingly opaque. So companies hired mathematically talented analysts to develop similar formulas, telling them how much those new instruments were worth and how risky they were. Then, disastrously, they forgot to ask how reliable the answers would be if market conditions changed.

Black and Scholes invented their equation in 1973; Robert Merton supplied extra justification soon after. It applies to the simplest and oldest derivatives: options. There are two main kinds. A put option gives its buyer the right to sell a commodity at a specified time for an agreed price. A call option is similar, but it confers the right to buy instead of sell. The equation provides a systematic way to calculate the value of an option before it matures. Then the option can be sold at any time. The equation was so effective that it won Merton and Scholes the 1997 Nobel prize in economics. (Black had died by then, so he was ineligible.)


If everyone knows the correct value of a derivative and they all agree, how can anyone make money? The formula requires the user to estimate several numerical quantities. But the main way to make money on derivatives is to win your bet – to buy a derivative that can later be sold at a higher price, or matures with a higher value than predicted. The winners get their profit from the losers. In any given year, between 75% and 90% of all options traders lose money. The world's banks lost hundreds of billions when the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst. In the ensuing panic, taxpayers were forced to pick up the bill, but that was politics, not mathematical economics.


The Black-Scholes equation relates the recommended price of the option to four other quantities. Three can be measured directly: time, the price of the asset upon which the option is secured and the risk-free interest rate. This is the theoretical interest that could be earned by an investment with zero risk, such as government bonds. The fourth quantity is the volatility of the asset. This is a measure of how erratically its market value changes. The equation assumes that the asset's volatility remains the same for the lifetime of the option, which need not be correct. Volatility can be estimated by statistical analysis of price movements but it can't be measured in a precise, foolproof way, and estimates may not match reality.



The idea behind many financial models goes back to Louis Bachelier in 1900, who suggested that fluctuations of the stock market can be modelled by a random process known as Brownian motion. At each instant, the price of a stock either increases or decreases, and the model assumes fixed probabilities for these events. They may be equally likely, or one may be more probable than the other. It's like someone standing on a street and repeatedly tossing a coin to decide whether to move a small step forwards or backwards, so they zigzag back and forth erratically. Their position corresponds to the price of the stock, moving up or down at random. The most important statistical features of Brownian motion are its mean and its standard deviation. The mean is the short-term average price, which typically drifts in a specific direction, up or down depending on where the market thinks the stock is going. The standard deviation can be thought of as the average amount by which the price differs from the mean, calculated using a standard statistical formula. For stock prices this is called volatility, and it measures how erratically the price fluctuates. On a graph of price against time, volatility corresponds to how jagged the zigzag movements look.

Black-Scholes implements Bachelier's vision. It does not give the value of the option (the price at which it should be sold or bought) directly. It is what mathematicians call a partial differential equation, expressing the rate of change of the price in terms of the rates at which various other quantities are changing. Fortunately, the equation can be solved to provide a specific formula for the value of a put option, with a similar formula for call options.



The early success of Black-Scholes encouraged the financial sector to develop a host of related equations aimed at different financial instruments. Conventional banks could use these equations to justify loans and trades and assess the likely profits, always keeping an eye open for potential trouble. But less conventional businesses weren't so cautious. Soon, the banks followed them into increasingly speculative ventures.
Any mathematical model of reality relies on simplifications and assumptions. The Black-Scholes equation was based on arbitrage pricing theory, in which both drift and volatility are constant. This assumption is common in financial theory, but it is often false for real markets. The equation also assumes that there are no transaction costs, no limits on short-selling and that money can always be lent and borrowed at a known, fixed, risk-free interest rate. Again, reality is often very different.



When these assumptions are valid, risk is usually low, because large stock market fluctuations should be extremely rare. But on 19 October 1987, Black Monday, the world's stock markets lost more than 20% of their value within a few hours. An event this extreme is virtually impossible under the model's assumptions. In his bestseller The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, an expert in mathematical finance, calls extreme events of this kind black swans. In ancient times, all known swans were white and "black swan" was widely used in the same way we now refer to a flying pig. But in 1697, the Dutch explorer Willem de Vlamingh found masses of black swans on what became known as the Swan River in Australia. So the phrase now refers to an assumption that appears to be grounded in fact, but might at any moment turn out to be wildly mistaken.


Large fluctuations in the stock market are far more common than Brownian motion predicts. The reason is unrealistic assumptions – ignoring potential black swans. But usually the model performed very well, so as time passed and confidence grew, many bankers and traders forgot the model had limitations. They used the equation as a kind of talisman, a bit of mathematical magic to protect them against criticism if anything went wrong.


Banks, hedge funds, and other speculators were soon trading complicated derivatives such as credit default swaps – likened to insuring your neighbour's house against fire – in eye-watering quantities. They were priced and considered to be assets in their own right. That meant they could be used as security for other purchases. As everything got more complicated, the models used to assess value and risk deviated ever further from reality. Somewhere underneath it all was real property, and the markets assumed that property values would keep rising for ever, making these investments risk-free.

The Black-Scholes equation has its roots in mathematical physics, where quantities are infinitely divisible, time flows continuously and variables change smoothly. Such models may not be appropriate to the world of finance. Traditional mathematical economics doesn't always match reality, either, and when it fails, it fails badly. Physicists, mathematicians and economists are therefore looking for better models.


At the forefront of these efforts is complexity science, a new branch of mathematics that models the market as a collection of individuals interacting according to specified rules. These models reveal the damaging effects of the herd instinct: market traders copy other market traders. Virtually every financial crisis in the last century has been pushed over the edge by the herd instinct. It makes everything go belly-up at the same time. If engineers took that attitude, and one bridge in the world fell down, so would all the others.
By studying ecological systems, it can be shown that instability is common in economic models, mainly because of the poor design of the financial system. The facility to transfer billions at the click of a mouse may allow ever-quicker profits, but it also makes shocks propagate faster.


Was an equation to blame for the financial crash, then? Yes and no. Black-Scholes may have contributed to the crash, but only because it was abused. In any case, the equation was just one ingredient in a rich stew of financial irresponsibility, political ineptitude, perverse incentives and lax regulation.

Despite its supposed expertise, the financial sector performs no better than random guesswork. The stock market has spent 20 years going nowhere. The system is too complex to be run on error-strewn hunches and gut feelings, but current mathematical models don't represent reality adequately. The entire system is poorly understood and dangerously unstable. The world economy desperately needs a radical overhaul and that requires more mathematics, not less. It may be rocket science, but magic it's not.


Ian Stewart is emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick. His new book 17 Equations That Changed the World is published by Profile (£15.99)

________________________________________________

Now that we know the model structure for the WORLD CENTRAL BANK ----and its tie to mathematics computer technology generated models-----let's look at that ONE WORLD ONE DIGITAL CURRENCY.

There are of course lots of products being allowed to make all this seem DEMOCRATIC----START UP ENTREPRENEURS are the drivers of this march to digital control of a world economy.  As with our outsourced public works and public services where patronage is thrown at the 5% to the 1% to make them think they are PLAYERS.......THE DESIGN FOR THIS DIGITAL CURRENCY is already assigned to global corporations.

Whether BitCoin vs Ethereum-----global 1% are laughing their BIG HEADS off at a global 99% allowing themselves to be made totally helpless.  We cannot have a functioning economy that addresses a 99% of citizens with rights and dignity with computer modeling geared to maximize profits for a global 1%.  That is what MOVING FORWARD WORLD CENTRAL BANK has as a goal.

Main street buys stock in these corporations always tied to global 1% families unaware these are stop-gap corporations simply driving government DEREGULATION OF ALL ECONOMIC POLICY setting the stage for what global 1% already has as the WORLD CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY.

Main street buys stock in these corporations always tied to global 1% families unaware these are stop-gap corporations simply driving government DEREGULATION OF ALL ECONOMIC POLICY setting the stage for what global 1% already has as the WORLD CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY.


 Killing that developed nation feeling of stable economy and stable currency----this currency control by computer models will have a DIGITAL CURRENCY worth one thing one day ---worth another the next day----no set currency value.

Ethereum was launched in the middle of 2015 by a 21-year-old college dropout, Vitalik Buterin, who was born in Russia and raised in Canada.




Move Over, Bitcoin. Ether Is the Digital Currency of the Moment.


By NATHANIEL POPPERJUNE 19, 2017
A virtual currency called Ether has been growing alongside Bitcoin in the last year to $35 billion, compared with Bitcoin’s $43 billion.

Source: Coinmarketcap.com | By The New York Times


The price of Bitcoin has hit record highs in recent months, more than doubling in price since the start of the year. Despite these gains, Bitcoin is on the verge of losing its position as the dominant virtual currency.



The value of Ether, the digital money that lives on an upstart network known as Ethereum, has risen an eye-popping 4,500 percent since the beginning of the year.
With the recent price increases, the outstanding units of the Ether currency were worth around $34 billion as of Monday — or 82 percent as much as all the Bitcoin in existence. At the beginning of the year, Ether was only about 5 percent as valuable as Bitcoin.



The sudden rise of Ethereum highlights how volatile the bewildering world of virtual currency remains, where lines of computer code can be spun into billions of dollars in a matter of months.


Bitcoin, the breakout digital currency, is also hitting new highs — one Bitcoin was worth $2,600 on Monday. But the Bitcoin community has struggled with technical issues and bitter internal divisions among its biggest supporters. It has also been tainted by its association with online drug sales and hackers demanding ransom.

Against this backdrop, Ether has been gaining steam. The two-year old system has picked up backing from both tech geeks and big corporate names like JPMorgan Chase and Microsoft, which are excited about Ethereum’s goal of providing not only a digital currency but also a new type of global computing network, which generally requires Ether to use.


In a recent survey of 1,100 virtual currency users, 94 percent were positive about the state of Ethereum, while only 49 percent were positive about Bitcoin, the industry publication CoinDesk said this month.


If recent trends continue, the value of Ethereum’s virtual currency could race past Bitcoin’s in the coming weeks. Virtual currency fanatics are monitoring the value of each and waiting for the two currencies to switch place, a moment that has been called “the flippening.”


“The momentum has shifted to Ethereum — there is no doubt about that,” said William Mougayar, the founder of Virtual Capital Ventures, which invests in a variety of virtual currencies and start-ups. “There is almost nothing you can do with Bitcoin that you can’t do with Ethereum.”


Racks of machines at a server farm mining Bitcoins and Ether in Guizhou, China, last June. Credit Gilles Sabrié for The New York Time


Even though most of the people buying Ether and Bitcoin are individual investors, the gains that both have experienced have taken what was until very recently a quirky fringe experiment into the realm of big money. The combined value of all Ether and Bitcoin is now worth more than the market value of PayPal and is approaching the size of Goldman Sachs.



Investors buying Ether are placing a bet that people will want to use the Ethereum network’s computing capabilities and will need the currency to do so. But that is far from a sure thing. And real-world use of the network is still scant.



Bitcoin, on the other hand, has made inroads into mainstream commerce, with companies like Overstock.com and Expedia accepting Bitcoin for purchases, along with the black-market operators who use the currency.

The fact that there are fewer real-world uses for Ethereum has many market experts expecting a crash similar to the ones that have followed previous run-ups in the price of Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Even during recent pullbacks, though, the value of Ether has generally continued to gain on Bitcoin in relative terms.


Ethereum was launched in the middle of 2015 by a 21-year-old college dropout, Vitalik Buterin, who was born in Russia and raised in Canada. He now lists his residence, jokingly, as Cathay Pacific Airlines because of his travel schedule.


The Ether he holds has made him a millionaire many times over, but he has generally avoided commenting on the price increase in Ether.

Mr. Buterin was inspired by Bitcoin, and the software he built shares some of the same basic qualities. Both are hosted and maintained by the computers of volunteers around the world, who are rewarded for their participation with the new digital tokens that are released onto the network each day.


Because the virtual currencies are tracked and maintained by a network of computers, no government or company is in charge. The prices of both Bitcoin and Ether are established on private exchanges, where people can sell the tokens they own at the going market price.


But Ethereum was designed to do much more than just serve as a digital money. The network of computers hooked into Ethereum can be harnessed to do computational work, essentially making it possible to run computer programs on the network, or what are referred to as decentralized applications, or Dapps. This has led to an enormous community of programmers working on the software.


One of the first applications to take off was a user-led venture capital fund of sorts, known as the Decentralized Autonomous Organization. After raising over $150 million last summer, the project crashed and burned, and appeared ready to take Ethereum with it.


But the way that Mr. Buterin and other developers dealt with the problems, returning the hacked Ether to users, won him the respect of many in the corporate world.


“It was good to see that there is governance on Ethereum and that they can fix issues in a timely manner if they have to,” said Eric Piscini, who leads the team looking into virtual currency technology at the consulting firm Deloitte.


Many applications being built on Ethereum are also raising money using the Ether currency, in what are known as initial coin offerings, a play on initial public offerings.
Start-ups that have followed this path have generally collected Ether from investors and exchanged them for units of their own specialized virtual currency, leaving the entrepreneurs with the Ether to convert into dollars and spend on operational expenses.


These coin offerings, which have proliferated in recent months, have created a surge of demand for the Ether currency. Just last week, investors sent $150 million worth of Ether to a start-up, Bancor, that wants to make it easier to launch virtual currencies. If projects like Bancor stumble, Ether could as well.
Several big companies have also been building programs on top of Ethereum, including the mining company BHP Billiton, which has built a trial program to track its raw materials, and JPMorgan, which is working on a system to monitor trading.
Over the last few months, over 100 companies have joined the nonprofit Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, including global names like Toyota, Merck and Samsung, to build tools that will make Ethereum useful in corporate settings.
Many of the companies using Ethereum are building their own private versions of the software, which won’t make use of the Ether currency. Speculators are betting that these companies will eventually plug their software into the broader Ethereum network.
There is, though, also the possibility that none of these big trials come to fruition, and the current excitement fizzles out, as has happened many times in the past with Bitcoin after big price surges.
“I hope this is the year where we start to close the gap between the speculative value and the actual value,” Mr. Mougayar said. “There is a lot at stake right now.”
______________________________________________

'Is it possible the Russian central bank is allowing the ruple to devalue to the point of inevitable collapse - so that Ethereum can take its place'?


'The problem here is the Bank of Russia is a part of the international banking cartel'.



This article is great at showing the ridiculous national media on RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA....Putin and Stalin were tied to global banking as much as CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA---we see another MYTH of a START UP by Buterin called an ordinary college drop out----as was Bill Gates as was Zuckerberg.  This young man is no doubt tied to Russia's oligarch families.

Here we see RUSSIA taking a swing at its CENTRAL BANK----think ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK is on Putin's mind?  Well, no one does OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% FREEMASONS better than Russia and Putin.

We see here the BRIC nations minus Russia going to GOLD STANDARD...Brazil, China, and India.....think they will stay a separate global economy?  Since the BRIC nations have that 1% tightly bound to OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE ----we think they are MOVING FORWARD.

The FAKE revolutionary groups pretending to be against the central bank are lying as they say these digital currencies fight central banks------they are paving the way for what WILL BE THE WORLD CENTRAL BANK------


'fuck yeah dude. wouldn't be surprised if he browsed /biz/ himself. smart af, looks like he's 12 yet he's a one man army against the central banks. an enigma'.

Ethereum Will Soon Become Russia's National Currency


last monthsquawker.org29 in ethereumFor a cleaner presentation, visit Squawker: Become the Counterculture


Ethereum Will Soon Become Russia's National Currency

Over the last few months, we consistently hear about how Russia, along with Brazil, India, China, and South Africa (known as the BRICS nations) plan to abandon the U.S. dollar for gold; a move that would seem as if Putin is breaking free from the international banking system.


Titles on articles have emerged that run with this idea, claiming he is battling the ruling elite - that he is a traitor to the New World Order."
Putin himself, in front of a gathering inside the Kremlin, has stated:
"I'm going to defeat the Illuminati with my bare hands."


The problem here is the Bank of Russia is a part of the international banking cartel.


Last week Putin meets with Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
Ethereum is a cryptocurrency that utilizes blockchain technology and is backed by several major banks, investment firms, and corporate giants, such as Microsoft, J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse, ING, Intel, UBS Financial Services ... the list goes on.


As the U.S. seeks to fear monger the incredible revolution that is blockchain, a technology that is said will not only change currency, but our world as we know it, Putin wants to implement it and change his nation's currency ...
... as do most of the central banks of the world.


According to Kalukhov, who joined the Russian central bank as deputy chief information officer in February 2015:


"Regulators support its adoption to a variable extent: some countries just don’t have enough technology companies, desire to do this or interest to the technology."
He further indicated that the Bank of Russia is keeping a close eye on technology developments, calling it a "key interest as the regulator".


According to a Bloomberg article: Russia’s central bank has already deployed an Ethereum-based blockchain as a pilot project to process online payments and verify customer data.


“The digital economy isn’t a separate industry, it’s essentially the foundation for creating brand new business models,” Putin said.


Vlad Martynov, an adviser for the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization that backs the cryptocurrency:


“If Russia implements it first, it will gain similar advantages to those the Western countries did at the start of the internet age.”
Then this past Friday we have the Russian ruble sliding 1.3% against the dollar as an influential banker fueled speculation about a possible sharp devaluation of the currency and the Russian central bank slashed the main interest rate.
In fact, the ruple is down more than 26% from a year ago.
Is it possible the Russian central bank is allowing the ruple to devalue to the point of inevitable collapse - so that Ethereum can take its place?
Putin is not battling the international banking system - he is becoming their new world leader that will pilot the next major empire once the Western Nations crumble.

_______________________________________________

When we see today's central banks going to digital currency this is the first stage in creating a ONE WORLD DIGITAL CURRENCY-----there is no intent of having separate national sovereign digital currencies.  Each step they take in these pathways to international online banking and currency DEREGULATES AND VOIDS centuries of economic and financial laws and court precedence ------it nulls what our US Constitution calls COMMON LAW-----this is why they are showing WE THE PEOPLE individual central banks taking this digital step---MOVING FORWARD to that WORLD CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY FOR ALL.

World’s Oldest Central Bank Could Be First to Issue Digital Currency
Sweden’s central bank could soon introduce and issue its own digital currency.

Samburaj Das on 21/11/2016


Sweden’s central bank is reportedly considering the issuance of its own digital currency, ekrona, in an effort to address the significant decline of the use of cash in the country.

First revealed in a Financial Times report, Sweden’s Riksbank could introduce and issue its own digital currency before the turn of the decade. As the report reveals, Sweden has seen a rapid decline of the use of physical cash – both coins and notes – in recent times. Circulation has dropped by 40% since 2009, leaving Riksbank little choice but to come up with an alternative solution. A large number of Swedes have abandoned cash for cards and other forms of digital payments – apps, e-transfers etc – making it a notable candidate as a prominent cash-free society.

In a public release, deputy governor at Riksbank Cecilia Skingsley addressed the dire cash-adoption situation. Furthermore, the lack of a template or an example of a central bank-issued digital currency could make the endeavor a tricky effort.


She stated:


The declining use of cash in Sweden means that this is more of a burning issue for us than for most other central banks. Although it may appear simple at first glance to issue e-krona, this is something entirely new for a central bank and there is no precedent to follow.



Skingsley further revealed her personal preference to design the digital currency – similar to that of traditional currency in its properties. The ekrona would not earn any interest and would be designed in a way to not enable illegal activity. This means that the ekrona could be traced by the central bank, in some capacity.


As the FT report notes, the Riksbank first issued paper banknotes in the 1660s, making it the world’s oldest central bank to do so. The report also suggests that blockchain technology could be used as the framework for Riksbank’s If developed, the effort would prove a significant endorsement of blockchain technology, the innovation powering bitcoin, the most prominent digital currency around.
The Krona could soon see its digital counterpart issued by the central bank.


Skingsley’s comments, while relevant to Sweden’s case as a society that has already seen a tremendous decline in cash-usage, comes during a time when China’s central bank has publicly revealed its intention to issue its own digital currency. Earlier this year, the People’s Bank of China stated it is looking to develop and introduce it “as soon as possible.” The governor of the PBOC also opined that paper cash as a “last generation currency”, hinting that China would opt for blockchain technology .


The bank also issued a recruitment notice recently as a call to developers to help enable the design and issuance of its digital currency.
Ultimately, it’s a matter of addressing society’s preference in Sweden’s case, according to Deputy Governor Skingsley.


She stated:
The less those of us living in Sweden use banknotes and coins, the clearer it becomes that the Riksbank needs to investigate whether we should issue electronic money as a complement to the money we have today.

Sweden’s central bank is expected to make a call on its digital currency within the next two years, according to the report.

The plans for ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE happened primarily at the Bretton Woods meetings in the midst of WW 2 ---this is when all nations ravaged by war signed on to that same CENTRAL BANK SYSTEM as our US FED.  FDR might be called a left social progressive ---but he was a Robber Baron and only his policies of public works and public agencies created broad opportunities for 99% of citizens.  FDR sadly no doubt intended this period of Robber Baron fraud CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.  As an economic policy left social progressive policy DID CREATE A FREE MARKET ECONOMY that was strong, broad, and sustainable.

'The European central bank (ECB) will be modeled after the Federal Reserve. Like the Fed in 1913, it will have the institutional appearance of decentralization, but also like the Fed it will be run by a cartel of big bankers in collusion with politicians at the expense of the public'.

Bretton Woods consolidated all nations' wealth and financial control to that 1% ---leaving the gold standard allowed all nations' gold reserves to be sold to those same 1%----and FIAT MONEY allowed those 1% to implode our national economies with fraud all while saying---this is good for economic stability, employment, and the quality of life for 99% of people.  

IF THE US HAD STAYED ON GOLD STANDARD WITH NO US FED WE WOULD HAVE REMAINED A STRONG, BROAD FINANCIAL EQUITY NATION FOR A THOUSAND YEARS.  We would not have grown as fast industrially, but as we see today the damage of unlimited industrialization is our DOWNFALL.

Please consider what would have been if Robber Barons had not taken both major parties-----left social capitalism is the best economic model for the 99% who hold their leaders accountable.  Today, with all US universities now controlled by corporations ----all economic policy is right wing, corporate wealth and power.  It matters to have our public universities working for public interest.

We have discussed in detail the role of US FED as ROBBER BARON IN CHIEF----this should allow citizens to see how expanding a powerful FED structure to ONE WORLD ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK would leave a few hands on the spigot of all money transfer globally.  NOT GOOD.

 'But I think the more likely candidate is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the "central banker's bank" in Basle, Switzerland'


Let's look at the next candidate for ONE WORLD ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK ---we saw the World Bank/IMF as one model being used---the BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS---BIS is the other model.  Switzerland is home of DAVOS --the meeting of the global 1%----so this is where all those families tied to global 1% have their power.  If they did not install a US FED----remove the GOLD STANDARD----install FIAT MONEY-----these global 1% would not have the power today in the US as it does.  THESE ARE THE PROBLEMS WE THE PEOPLE MUST FIX-----

Again, the BIS was created at around the same time as United Nations tied to war reparations......


What Is The Bank For International Settlements?


By Reem Heakal
 
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is a bank for central banks.(To learn more about central banks, see the article What Are Central Banks?) Founded in 1930, the Bank for International Settlements is the oldest global financial institution and operates under the auspices of international law. But from its inception to the present day, the role of the BIS has been ever-changing, as it adapts to the dynamic global financial community and its needs. Read on as we explain this bank and its role in global banking.


Financial Chameleon

The BIS was created out of the Hague Agreements of 1930 and took over the job of the Agent General for Repatriation in Berlin. When established, the BIS was responsible for the collection, administration and distribution of reparations from Germany - as agreed upon in the Treaty of Versailles - following World War I. The BIS was also the trustee for Dawes and Young Loans, which were internationally issued loans used to finance these repatriations.



After World War II, the BIS turned its focus to the defense and implementation of the World Bank's Bretton Woods System. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the BIS monitored cross-border capital flows in the wake of the oil and debt crises, which in turn led to the development of regulatory supervision of internationally active banks.



The BIS has also emerged as an emergency "funder" to nations in trouble, coming to the aid of countries such as Mexico and Brazil during their debt crises in 1982 and 1998, respectively. In cases like these, where the International Monetary Fund is already in the country, emergency funding is provided through the IMF structured program.



The BIS has also functioned as trustee and agent. For example, from 1979 to 1994, the BIS was the agent for the European Monetary System, which is the administration that paved the way for a single European currency.
Notwithstanding all the roles mentioned above, the BIS has always been a promoter of central bank cooperation in an effort to ensure global monetary and financial stability.



Lean On Me


Given the continuously changing global economic structure, the BIS has had to adapt to many different financial challenges. However, by focusing on providing traditional banking services to member central banks, the BIS essentially gives the "lender of last resort" a shoulder to lean on. In its aim to support global financial and monetary stability, the BIS is an integral part of the international economy.


To promote such stability, the BIS offers a forum of cooperation among member central banks (including monetary agencies). It does so by offering support and banking services for central banks:



The BIS offers its support by:

• Contributing to international cooperation - As a crucial resource for central banks and other financial institutions, the BIS produces research and statistics, and organizes seminars and workshops focused on international financial issues. For example, the Financial Stability Institute (FSI) organizes seminars and lectures on themes of global financial stability. The governors of member central banks meet at the BIS twice a month to share their experiences, and these meetings function as the core of central bank cooperation. Other regular meetings of central bank executives and specialists, as well as economists and supervisory specialists, contribute to the goal of international cooperation, while also ensuring that each central bank serves its country effectively. The ultimate goal of all these high-level meetings is global financial stability.
• Offering services to committees established and working at the BIS - By offering its services to various secretariats of financial committees and organizations created under its patronage, the BIS also functions as an international "think tank" for financial issues. Committees such as the Markets Committee debate and improve upon fundamental issues regarding the workings and regulations of the international financial infrastructure.

As the bankers' bank, the BIS serves the financial needs of member central banks. It provides gold and foreign exchange transactions for them and holds central bank reserves. The BIS is also a banker and fund manager for other international financial institutions.



How the Bank Operates



The BIS does compete directly with other private financial institutions for global banking activities; however, it does not hold current accounts for individuals or governments. At one time, private shareholders as well as central banks held shares in the BIS. But in 2001 it was decided that the private shareholders should be compensated and that ownership of the BIS should be restricted to the central banks (or equivalent monetary authorities). There are currently 55 member central banks.


The BIS's unit of account is the IMF's special drawing rights, which are a basket of convertible currencies. The reserves that are held account for approximately 7% of the world's total currency.


Like any other bank, the BIS strives to offer premium services in order to attract central banks as clients. In order to provide security, it maintains abundant equity capital and reserves that are diversely invested following risk analysis. The BIS ensures liquidity for central banks by offering to buy back tradable instruments from central banks; many of these instruments have been specifically designed for the central bank's needs. In order to compete with private financial institutions, the BIS offers a top return on funds invested by central banks.


The statutes of the BIS are presided over by three bodies: the general meeting of member central banks, the board of directors and the management of the BIS. Decisions on the functions of the BIS are made at each level and are based on a weighted voting arrangement.


Conclusion

The BIS is a global center for financial and economic interests. As such, it has been a principal architect in the development of the global financial market. Given the dynamic nature of social, political and economic situations around the world, the BIS can be seen as a stabilizing force, encouraging financial stability and international prosperity in the face of global change.

__________________________________________

We always shout to watch out for those IVY LEAGUE universities and those OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE-----they are the source of massive frauds and looting these few decades.

Below we see the influence of just one Robber Baron family connected to early American settlers but tied to old world global 1%.  We have always known the connections of Roger Williams et al to OLD WORLD FREEMASONRY and Brown University being central in the slave trade of 1500-1700s.  Who would one think would want to be tied to these OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE LAISSEZ FAIRE global trade policies? 

Cornell University is of course ground zero for our OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE freemasonry and happens to be from where Bill Clinton's ancestors tied to the same lived-------these families were low-tier upon coming to America---they became tools of top tier global 1% once established.

Thomas Cornell (settler)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thomas Cornell, Sr (c. 1595 – c. 1655) was one of the earliest settlers of Boston (1638), Rhode Island (1643) and the Bronx and a contemporary of Roger Williams and the family of Anne Hutchinson. He was the ancestor of a number of Americans prominent in business, politics, and education.

Notable descendants

Thomas Cornell is an ancestor to a number of prominent and notorious Americans, including Ezra Cornell founder of Cornell University, William Ellery, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Ezekiel Cornell a Revolutionary War general who represented Rhode Island in the U.S. Continental Congress from 1780 to 1782,[5] Bill Gates, Presidents Jimmy Carter, Grover Cleveland and Richard Nixon, First Lady Elizabeth Monroe, Senators Bob Graham and Daniel Webster, Secretary of State John Kerry, Amelia Earhart and accused axe murderer Lizzie Borden by way of Thomas Cornell (Jr.)'s daughter, Innocent, born to his second wife Sarah Earle Cornell after his execution.[6]

The history of Cornell University begins when its two founders, Andrew Dickson White of Syracuse and Ezra Cornell of Ithaca, met in the New York State Senate in January 1864. Together, they established Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in 1865. The university was initially funded by Ezra Cornell's $400,000 endowment and by New York's 989,920-acre (4,006.1 km2) allotment of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862.[1]

Here we see Grover Cleveland, Nixon, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry, and that gazillionaire Bill Gates----allowed to buy Department of Defense computer technology patents to become that global 1%.

Grover Cleveland came to office at the time of this same system of economic crashes-----and as we see below he was tied to GOLD STANDARD VS SILVER wars only siding with GOLD until banking structures for FIAT BANKING were in place.  This was the driver of ending GOLD STANDARD but the investments overseas are what brought the nation down......global investment by the then 1% was followed by a crash with Cleveland at the helm at the time of this crash.

WHO IS A SILVERIST-----RON PAUL OWNS A MAJORITY  OF SILVER ---THAT IS WHAT DRIVES RON PAUL----

One of the first clear signs of trouble came on February 20, 1893,[4] thirteen days before the inauguration of U.S. president Grover Cleveland, with the appointment of receivers for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, which had greatly overextended itself.[5] Upon taking office, Cleveland dealt directly with the Treasury crisis,[6] and successfully convinced Congress to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, legislation Cleveland felt was mainly responsible for the economic crisis

Ron Paul is not worried about you and me----Paul is worried that hyper-inflation created by Nixon's FIAT MONEY disconnecting US economy from GOLD will kill his own personal wealth---and it will.  His drive to end the FED is good---his desire for Gold Standard is good---but he is doing it for himself---he is far-right wing extreme wealth extreme poverty LIBERTARIAN .  So, NIXON' fiat money policies threw RON PAUL for a loop.  NIXON, JIMMY CARTER, JOHN KERRY, BILL GATES all same family.  To where did much of US wealth move these few decades of ROBBER BARRON FRAUDS-----Jimmy Carter is not just a peanut farmer.  It so happens that these family members are all ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE and of course ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK.  Today's US FED under YELLEN is about to unleash hyper-inflation that will kill 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE'S wealth-----as it says----simply owning precious metals is not a hedge in this manufactured massive fraud by the descendants of Thomas Cornell for one.

If you lived in a state that was left social progressive you learned all this in K-public university-----these universities would publish research on public policy making all this well known...CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA killed public K-university so WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% these few generations do not know all these connections. This is the problem and this is what we need to FIX---how is shaking our fist at Trump going to FIX these local problems? That dastardly 5% to the 1%----This is why we say---don't go Libertarian just because Ron Paul wants to save his investments-----he is a global Wall Street player and will not protect the 99% of people ---Libertarians are wealth and corporate power.


Ron Paul Put 64 Percent Of His Portfolio In Gold, Silver Miners


By Michelle Jones on August 21, 2013 4:31 pm in Business


Ron Paul really likes gold. And silver. And hard assets of almost any kind. But equities, not so much. Street Authority took an up-close look at the former presidential candidate’s portfolio recently, and he has an astonishing 64 percent of it in gold and silver miners. Twenty-one percent of his portfolio is in real estate, while 15 percent of it is in cash.


The remaining 1 percent is allocated to stocks, although his bets are on the short side.


Ron Paul worries about the economy

Any investor who has just read this portfolio allocation is probably scratching his or her head. Why on earth would anyone put so much in one sector of the market? For Paul, it’s simple. He has said in the past that he’s worried about the strength of the U.S. dollar because it isn’t backed by a physical asset. Also it’s been devaluing steadily since 2001 thanks to increasing deficits in domestic trade.


Paul is also worried about massive inflation, and gold is generally a safe bet against inflation, although many would point out that it’s strange to invest in gold miners rather than the precious metal itself through exchange-traded funds.
__________________________________________
Ron Paul is just one of those US citizens able to gain wealth and is likely to take that fall.  What voters must consider is this-----PAUL is ONE WORLD ----his shouts to END THE US FED come as global 1% intend to end the US FED anyway------that is what ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK is---ending our national Wall Street and national US FED to create only that international financial model controlled by the global 1%.

Simply calling for END THE US FED ----does not a left social progressive or a right wing conservative make.
The GLOBAL GREEN CORPORATION PARTY calls for END THE US FED----but they are ONE WORLD ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK----that's why they shout END THE US FED.
Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders are indeed global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE installing United Nations global corporate sustainability policies.  Trump is simply the same OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% FREEMASON so he is not stopping MOVING FORWARD.

To Really ‘Make America Great Again,’ End the Fed!Written by Ron Paul
Sunday November 27, 2016


Former Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher recently gave a speech identifying the Federal Reserve’s easy money/low interest rate policies as a source of the public anger that propelled Donald Trump into the White House. Mr. Fisher is certainly correct that the Fed’s policies have “skewered” the middle class. However, the problem is not specific Fed policies, but the very system of fiat currency managed by a secretive central bank.

Federal Reserve-generated increases in money supply cause economic inequality. This is because, when the Fed acts to increase the money supply, well-to-do investors and other crony capitalists are the first recipients of the new money. These economic elites enjoy an increase in purchasing power before the Fed’s inflationary policies lead to mass price increases. This gives them a boost in their standard of living.

By the time the increased money supply trickles down to middle- and working-class Americans, the economy is already beset by inflation. So most average Americans see their standard of living decline as a result of Fed-engendered money supply increases.

Some Fed defenders claim that inflation doesn’t negatively affect anyone’s standard of living because price increases are matched by wage increases. This claim ignores the fact that the effects of the Fed’s actions depend on how individuals react to the Fed’s actions.

Historically, an increase in money supply does not just cause a general rise in prices. It also causes money to flow into specific sectors, creating a bubble that provides investors and workers in those areas a (temporary) increase in their incomes. Meanwhile, workers and investors in sectors not affected by the Fed-generated boom will still see a decline in their purchasing power and thus their standard of living.

Adoption of a “rules-based” monetary policy will not eliminate the problem of Fed-created bubbles, booms, and busts, since Congress cannot set a rule dictating how individuals react to Fed policies. The only way to eliminate the boom-and-bust cycle is to remove the Fed’s power to increase the money supply and manipulate interest rates.

Because the Fed’s actions distort the view of economic conditions among investors, businesses, and workers, the booms created by the Fed are unsustainable. Eventually reality sets in, the bubble bursts, and the economy falls into recession.

When the crash occurs the best thing for Congress and the Fed to do is allow the recession to run its course. Recessions are the economy’s way of cleaning out the Fed-created distortions. Of course, Congress and the Fed refuse to do that. Instead, they begin the whole business cycle over again with another round of money creation, increased stimulus spending, and corporate bailouts.

Some progressive economists acknowledge how the Fed causes economic inequality and harms average Americans. These progressives support perpetual low interest rates and money creation. These so-called working class champions ignore how the very act of money creation causes economic inequality. Longer periods of easy money also mean longer, and more painful, recessions.

President-elect Donald Trump has acknowledged that, while his business benefits from lower interest rates, the Fed’s policies hurt most Americans. During the campaign, Mr. Trump also promised to make audit the fed part of his first 100 days agenda. Unfortunately, since the election, President-elect Trump has not made any statements regarding monetary policy or the audit the fed legislation. Those of us who understand that changing monetary policy is the key to making America great again must redouble our efforts to convince Congress and the new president to audit, then end, the Federal Reserve.
_________________________________________________

Each of the original 13 colonies have this same set of OLD WORLD FAMILIES that make up that US 1%.  These are those top tier 5% to the 1% ----with our states and cities having those lower-tier fighting to climb this insider ladder.  Now, our black citizens at the time of Roaring 20s Wall Street frauds created their own class of families they call that US 1%----the Harlem Renaissance was that agreement between US black and white 1% to keep the 99% of US citizens impoverished.  This is what we see today as Greeks and freemasonry totally captured black economic society.

When Greenspan brought the US down to economic crash and recession/depression after these few decades of massive Robber Barron fraud he sent trillions of dollars to this BANK FOR INTERNATIONAL SETTLEMENTS.  Those Bretton Woods Central Banks in nations around the world were key to laundering all the wealth out of US through US FED and global Wall Street frauds......in turn those foreign Central Banks did the same to their 99% moving all wealth to the 1%.  One of the loudest shouts against these 2009 bank bailouts was over those trillions of dollars sent to BIS-----know what BIS is intended to be?  Possibly that ONE WORLD ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

It was simply a blatant looting of our US Treasury in this staged bankrupting of US and is an assault on our national sovereignty by these 1% families.  Who controls BASEL BIC?  No doubt those same global 1% OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE families.

This is why WE THE PEOPLE THE US 99% AND ALL OTHER NATIONS' 99% WOULD NOT WANT A WORLD CENTRAL BANK TO THE EXCLUSION OF NATIONAL BANKS.  END THE US FED DOES NOT MEAN REPLACE IT WITH THIS ONE WORLD MODEL. 

Below we see Bernie Sanders rise to the stage as neo-liberalism morphs to global corporate campus socialism---so please don't think these national media events around a few stances make that citizen a POPULIST LEADER----AS WITH RON AND RAND PAUL----  we gave Bernie a chance and he pulled an AL GORE on us----GORE being tied to a Maryland OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE freemason family.



What Is The Bank For International Settlements?

None of this would have occurred if FDR did not end Gold Standard and if Nixon had not installed FIAT MONEY. The US would have had a health economy for a thousand years and the world would not have had the industrial revolutions one after the other that created CLIMATE CHANGE.



Sep 20, 2011 @ 01:26 PM 89,108 12 Stocks to Buy Now


The Fed's $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-Reported


Tracey Greenstein , Contributor


I cover culture and travel. Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.


The media’s inscrutable brush-off of the Government Accounting Office’s recently released audit of the Federal Reserve has raised many questions about the Fed’s goings-on since the financial crisis began in 2008.
The audit of the Fed’s emergency lending programs was scarcely reported by mainstream media - albeit the results are undoubtedly newsworthy.  It is the first audit of the Fed in United States history since its beginnings in 1913.  The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for “financial assistance” during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis.



Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) amended the Wall Street Reform law to audit the Fed, pushing the GAO to step in and take a look around.  Upon hearing the announcement that the first-ever audit would take place in July, the media was bowled over and nearly every broadcast network and newspaper covered the story.  However, the audit’s findings were almost completely overlooked, even with a number as high as $16 trillion staring all of us in the face.




Sanders press release, dated July 21st, stated:


“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president.”


The report serves as a clear testimony of the Fed’s emergency action plan to bailout foreign corporations and banks in a time of crisis, but the GAO report does not berate the Fed; rather, it provides a lucid explanation of where the money was allocated and why.


According to The Washington Post, “The GAO report did not condemn the Fed’s actions, it simply illuminated them.  The GAO also recommended that the Fed make clearer and more rigorous its policies for hiring independent contractors to manage investment programs."


A wider investigation of the Fed is due on October 18th, which will provide more thorough details.   The GAO report said that the Fed issued "conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans."  The audit will inspect the "conflicts of interest" and the inner-workings of the Fed's emergency-lending programs.


For Sanders, one thing is clear: "The Federal Reserve must be reformed to serve the needs of working families, not just CEOs on Wall Street."
_____________________________________________

This document has a great schematic to what this BIC/GLOBAL NATIONAL BANKS looks like and it is this structure that makes it appear this BIC will be that model WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

During Obama global Wall Street US FED, US Treasury, and global Wall Street banks essentially eliminated WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% from our own US economy.  That 5% to the 1% received some stock option payments but for the most part only the global 1% were included in Bernanke's US FED controlled US economy.  That is because all the FIAT MONEY CONTROLS said to TRICKLE DOWN to main street were now all directed at only global corporations, global Wall Street, and global banking.  This created the TWO TIER ECONOMIC STRUCTURES were WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% will not HAVE MONEY----the global 1% WILL HAVE MONEY.

Obama ran as a left social progressive telling us he would hold power accountable and then flipped to being more ONE WORLD THAN BUSH.

How to Send an International Wire
via the Fedwire
®
Funds Service


This document is intended to serve as a quick reference guide for steps senders and receivers may
take to route international wire transfers through
the Fedwire Funds Service
.
The Federal Reserve Banks frequently receive requests from Fedwire participants for the Fedwire Funds Service to offer
international funds transfers. These requests appear to arise, in part, from the misperception that the Fedwire Funds
Service cannot be used to send/receive wire transfer messages to/from parties located outside of the U.S.


While it is true that funds transfers denominated in foreign currencies must be processed through an international correspondent bank, a sender can route the U.S. leg of an international transfer denominated in U.S. dollars through the Fedwire Funds Service.



For instance, if a Fedwire Funds Service participant knows the proper routing information for all the banking parties in a wire transfer payment chain, then
it can route a transfer through the Fedwire Funds Service to send a U.S. dollar Fedwire funds transfer message to a party outside of the U.S.


Likewise, if a foreign sender knows the proper routing information for a Fedwire Funds Service participant
(i.e., routing number or SWIFT Bank Identifier Code (BIC), if applicable), then the Fedwire Funds Service participant can receive U.S. dollar wire transfer payments originated outside the U.S. over Fedwire.

____________________________________________
Please take time to research this FEDWIRE BIC EXCHANGE as it will show were MOVING FORWARD ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK started ----with the Bretton Woods FDR WW 2 actions tied to UNITED NATIONS. 

What is happening in US today is this----all global Wall Street banks are merging and literally will disappear into this international banking structure tied to INTERNATIONAL ONLINE BANKING ONLY.  The US will essentially become that same developing nation colonial outpost nation having no banking system of its own.  NO BANKING NO SOVEREIGNTY......

Tim Geithner is the architect of all this for the global 1%----fueling the frauds as New York FED during the time Wall Street frauds went wild----he didn't see anything says GEITHNER----we see he is that grad from GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS which was central in both the frauds and the wealth accumulation.  Tim Geithner said as a commencement speaker at HOPKINS in 2009 -----PEOPLE ARE GOING TO HATE US---BUT IT HAD TO BE DONE----he was talking about ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE and it had to be done for the global 1%.

We keep emphasizing NONE OF THIS WAS LEGAL---they ignored the entirety of US Federal court precedence---US Constitutional law----so

WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% ARE NOT DOWN AND OUT-----STAND UP AND TAKE OUR NATION BACK. GET RID OF THOSE GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS AND PLAYERS.


If someone is shouting END THE US FED----they are as likely working to create this ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK to replace the US FED as they are a REAL 99% wanting to save US sovereignty by getting rid of US FED.


Timothy Geithner


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Geitner" redirects here. For the surname, see Geitner (surname).


Timothy Geithner

75th United States Secretary of the Treasury
In office
January 26, 2009 – January 25, 2013
PresidentBarack Obama
DeputyNeal S. Wolin
Preceded byHenry Paulson
Succeeded byJack Lew
9th President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
In office
November 17, 2003 – January 26, 2009
Preceded byWilliam Joseph McDonough
Succeeded byWilliam C. Dudley
United States Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs
In office
1998–2001
PresidentBill Clinton
Personal details
BornTimothy Franz Geithner
August 18, 1961 (age 55)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Political partyIndependent[1]
Spouse(s)Carole Marie Sonnenfeld (1985–present)
Children2
Alma materDartmouth College
Johns Hopkins University
Signature
WebsiteGovernment website


Timothy Franz "Tim" Geithner (/ˈɡaɪtnər/; born August 18, 1961) is a former American central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009, following service in the Clinton administration. He now serves as president of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm.



THESE ARE THE PEOPLE THE WORLD CALLS A GLOBAL CRIMINAL CARTEL----THAT GLOBAL 1% AND THEIR 2% WITH THAT 5%.


Fedwire: The US Dollar in International Payments


ARTICLEBy Frances Coppola

The US dollar is the world’s premier reserve currency. It is used as a settlement currency for transactions worldwide, and commodities traded on world markets are priced in dollars. Many countries outside the US either use it as their own currency (Ecuador, Panama) or peg their currency to it in some way (China). International payments denominated in US dollars are made all over the world, all the time.



But ultimately, all international payments in US dollars have to be settled through the US, as the issuer of the currency. Specifically, international wire transfers are processed via the Federal Reserve’s Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), known as the “Fedwire Funds Service” or just “Fedwire.”


How does Fedwire work for international payments?


Fedwire is one of a family of central bank RTGS systems that together form what we might call the “hubs” of the international payments network. Broadly speaking, each currency issuer has its own central bank RTGS system. So, for example, the European Central Bank’s (ECB) TARGET2 system is the RTGS for the Euro, and the Bank of England’s CHAPS is the RTGS for sterling. Fedwire, like other RTGS systems, handles international payments instantly (“real time”) and without netting (“gross”). Once the accounting entries are made, they are irreversible (“settled”).


Central banks operate RTGS systems because, as currency issuers, they can provide unlimited liquidity to the international payments network, eliminating the risk of wire transfer failures due to lack of currency reserves at intermediaries.


In the fall of 2007, international payments systems became stressed due to shortages of certain currencies, including the US dollar. The Fed provided US dollar liquidity to support international payments via temporary swap lines with a number of other central banks. The temporary swap lines ended in 2010, but permanent swap lines have now been established with five major central banks including the ECB and the Bank of Japan, reinforcing the US dollar’s position as the international settlement currency.


Both US and foreign banks can send and receive payments via Fedwire. If foreign banks are Fedwire participants, they can send and receive payments directly via Fedwire using the SWIFT international messaging service. If they are not, then they can send payments via a US bank or another foreign bank that is a Fedwire participant – this is a form of “correspondent banking.”



Another route for international payments is the bank-owned, privately operated Clearing House International Payments System (CHIPS). Participants include US banks and US branches of foreign banks. CHIPS is not a RTGS: dollar payments sent via CHIPS are batched and netted before processing. The net transactions are then settled via Fedwire. As the Federal Reserve Bank of New York says, “CHIPS is both a customer and a competitor of the Federal Reserve’s Fedwire service”, since CHIPS relies on Fedwire for settlement but accepts large value payments that could be sent directly via Fedwire.


An uncertain future for international US dollar payments


Use of the Euro for international payments is growing, and admission of the Chinese Renminbi to the IMF’s SDR basket starting in October 2016 raises the possibility that it could become an important international settlement currency in the future.5 Nonetheless, as yet the dominance of the US dollar in international payments is not seriously challenged. But the way in which international dollar payments may be processed in future could be affected by other factors.


In 2014, the French bank BNP Paribas was fined nearly $9 billion for systematic violation of US sanctions against various countries. Additionally, its access to dollar clearing via CHIPS and Fedwire for certain types of transaction was suspended for a year.6 This is the most severe penalty imposed on a foreign bank for breaking US laws, but it is by no means the only one. Other foreign banks which have suffered penalties for sanctions-breaking and money laundering include HSBC, Barclays, Standard Chartered, ING and Credit Suisse.


The long line of regulatory and legal enforcement actions against foreign banks trading in US dollars has raised questions about the future of international dollar clearing through the US. Writing in September 2014, Ernest L. Patrikis, a partner at a leading international law firm, warned that excessively heavy penalties could drive foreign banks to exit from dollar clearing altogether, or to set up their own offshore facilities.8 But an unnamed senior banking executive quoted in Euromoney in January poured cold water on the idea that European banks would set up their own US dollar clearing facility, noting that underlying transactions would still need to be settled in New York.9


The Takeaway


International payments denominated in dollars are quickly and efficiently processed through the Federal Reserve’s Fedwire system, which can be accessed by financial institutions worldwide either directly or via the US’s extensive network of correspondent banks. Until other currencies can offer similar efficiency of processing and widespread acceptance, US dollar clearing via Fedwire seems likely to remain the world’s premier international payments process.

We want everyone to remember, corporations do have the right to hire immigrants BUT when they do those immigrant workers fall under US Constitutional rights and Federal labor rights in the workplace. The idea that Congress can pass a law that clears corporations of any legal responsibility for how immigrants they hire are bound to contracts and then exploits them once here IS LYING. Both our city attorneys office and our state attorneys offices---our state DLLR and our US Labor Department once had full staffing to assure these labor protections---now completely dismantled.....CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA.

As we segue to WORLD FEDERAL BANK policies let's remember as today's right wing rants against regulations that kill free market.  We spend weeks making clear it is the RIGHT WING that creates these regulatory laws geared towards small and regional business because they want to KILL COMPETITION FOR CORPORATIONS.  They spent all of last century chipping away FDR regulations meant to hold corporation power in check replacing those regulatory laws protecting against MONOPOLY with laws just as the one below in the JOBS ACT.  As the article yesterday stated----the commerce laws around what is fast becoming the only ECONOMY IN TOWN---TECHNOLOGY----is repressive with aims at killing FREE MARKET COMPETITION.

ONE WORLD GLOBAL WALL STREET POLS DO NOT EVEN THINK OF THE US 99% AS HAVING RIGHTS OR BUSINESSES---THESE LAWS ARE GEARED FOR GLOBAL CORPORATIONS HAVING AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD IN US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.

'The ultimate goal of the JOBS Act was to infuse capital into the small businesses that account for 65% of job growth in the United States. Ultimately, the equity crowdfunding portion of the bill fell short, creating too many regulatory hurdles to appeal to high-growth startups'

Below we see an article written by MISES back in 1988 talking about ONE WORLD ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK----this was REAGAN era.  So every time one hears someone say ONE WORLD is conspiracy theory--which these 5% players still do today----these articles show the discussion through last century.  MISES is a Austrian political philosophy think tank and source for today's University of Chicago NEO-LIBERALISM in US.

Global Wall Street pols do indeed think these ONE WORLD STRUCTURES ARE MOVING FORWARD.  Let's remember this----everything done these few decades was illegal and can be VOIDED EASY PEASY.  Eliminating US FED would be a start in rebuilding our US economy and financial stability so we don't need connections to any WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

We see in 1988 the plan to create the EUROZONE eliminating those European nation currencies this was followed in US by breaking GLASS STEAGALL and deregulating banks---ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE was the goal for 1990s Congress and Clinton.  Look how the plan also takes Euro Central Bank and Bank of Japan as the first stage.


'European governments have targeted 1992 for abolishing individual European currencies and replacing them with the European Currency Unit, the ECU. Next they plan to set up a European central bank. The next step is the merger of the Federal Reserve, the European central bank, and the Bank of Japan into one world central bank'.
The Free Market

The Coming World Central Bank


10/01/1988Ron Paul
fm1088_0.pdf fm1088_0.pdfThe Free Market 6, no. 10 (October 1988)

International statists have long dreamed of a world currency and a world central bank. Now it looks as if their dream may come true.
European governments have targeted 1992 for abolishing individual European currencies and replacing them with the European Currency Unit, the ECU. Next they plan to set up a European central bank.

The next step is the merger of the Federal Reserve, the European central bank, and the Bank of Japan into one world central bank.


The ECU is a basket of ten European currencies weighted according to their respective country's economic strength. The German mark gets the highest weight while the Irish pound, the Danish krone, and the Greek drachma get lower. The ECU doesn't qualify as a working currency yet, but it is already being used by international banks and multinational corporations. And traveler's checks denominated in ECU's are also popular in Europe.


The ECU first appeared in 1979. Its creators quickly found that its usefulness was limited without a clearing system, so Credit Lyonnais of Paris and Morgan Guaranty Bank of New York formed the ECU Banking Association, made up of top central bankers and government officials. In March 1986 they set up the European Investment Bank and SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) to process ECU transactions. Within a few months, all major central banks had signed on, and today, ECU transactions represent the fifth largest trading volume in international currency markets.


The big push for the European central bank began after the October 1987 stock market crash as politicians seized the moment of crisis to advance their agenda. "The logic of developments... demand that the European currency takes over from the national ones," argued socialist French President Francois Mitterrand.
In November 1987, European politicians, businessmen, and bankers formed the Action Committee for Europe to promote the European central bank, arguing that Europe needs one currency and "a common authority to manage it."
The European central bank (ECB) will be modeled after the Federal Reserve. Like the Fed in 1913, it will have the institutional appearance of decentralization, but also like the Fed it will be run by a cartel of big bankers in collusion with politicians at the expense of the public.


Margaret Thatcher is the only influential holdout in Europe. And she objects because she thinks the influence of Germany's central bank will allow less inflation than she wants! But like all central banks, the ECB is designed to inflate. And it will have a particularly free hand. With twelve separate currencies, exchange rate fluctuations allow people to sell more inflationary currencies for the stronger ones, providing some constraint on inflation. That will no longer be the case with the Ecu.


The head of the European Monetary System, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, says Thatcher will join when the ECU becomes "a real currency." However, no government or group of governments can create a currency out of thin air. They must pay attention to the economic laws that Ludwig von Mises proved with his "regression theorem," namely, that currencies must originate in the free market. But unlike the International Monetary Funds Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), European governments did not create the ECU out of nothing. It is composed of existing currencies which in turn had their origins in gold and silver.


The plan for the transition has central banks fixing the trading range of the ECU relative to. other currencies while allowing them to freely circulate side by side. Then governments will overvalue the ECU relative to other European currencies, and people will sell their pounds, lira, and marks for the ECU, putting into effect a kind of backwards Gresham's Law.

"There is one hitch," says Forbes magazine. "Although currencies that make up the ECU maintain a balance relative to one another, the entire currency basket fluctuates against the dollar, so cashing in ECU's for dollars could result in a gain or a loss."


One of the few constraints now operating on the Fed is that if it inflates too much, people will dump the dollar for a more stable currency. That's why there is a push to achieve international monetary "stability" (that is, equal rates of inflation) by cartelizing what will then be three remaining central banks of the indutrialized world into one world central bank charged with manipulating one world currency.

The Economist of London says that "Thirty years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other rich countries" will be "paying for their shopping with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen, or D-marks" but in terms of a new world currency.


Central banking is a horrendous idea to begin with. Merging central banks will be even worse. The resulting institution would become, as Dr. Edwin Vieira has remarked, "the biggest agent of economic and political irresponsibility the world has ever seen." Today, if the u.s. Congress has a sudden fit of economic sanity, it could restrict the Fed's power. The mere threat of that serves as a limit. But the world central bank would be subject to no authority.


The world central bank might be based on the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, says the Economist. But I think the more likely candidate is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the "central banker's bank" in Basle, Switzerland. World central bankers have been holding "consultative meetings" there once a month for over a year. Recently, the meetings have concentrated on giving the BIS "lender of last resort functions and responsibilities. " That means the power to create money and credit out of thin air.


They all want, as Banker magazine noted, "a world in which national policy authority is greatly reduced, and replaced by more powerful international policy-making bodies."


Finance Minister Edouard Balladur of France writes in the Wall Street Journal that we should "entrust a small group of distinguished people of unquestionable moral authority" with the job of designing "a world order" that is "binding on all." But such an elitist idea would only produce a monster. That is why those of us who believe in individual liberty and free markets must actively oppose this plan, despite the proponents' use of free-market rhetoric. (One free-market publication praised the Ecu as "an extension of Hayek's work on competitive currency.")


None of this is to say that I approve of the status quo. The world monetary system is shaky. The system of floating exchange rates between fiat currencies only adds to the volatility. And we do need more international cooperation. But we want economic integration without political integration.


We all know the troubles we have dealing with city hall, let alone the state house or Washington, D.C. A world system would be unimaginably worse. Internationally as well as domestically, the answers to economic problems are free markets, free trade, free labor, and a gold standard. All would build the only kind of world economic order consistent with sound economics and individual freedom.

_______________________________________
When our Baltimore politicians say THEY wouldn't like that when WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% keep fighting for our US Constitutional rights to legislate and have voice in our public policy------this is the THEY====THE GLOBAL 1%.  Right away we know that politician needs to go.

The article posted yesterday discussing BANCOR----THAT WORLD CURRENCY FOR A WORLD CENTRAL BANK-----used this word in describing MOVING FORWARD---it is this----a cruel, all-controlling ruler oppressing everyone.  That will be the end result if we continue to allow ONE WORLD ONE CENTRAL BANK MOVE FORWARD---UNITED NATIONS GOALS.  You can see why global 1% need SMART CITIES DEEP STATE in all FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES.
'A despot, is a cruel, all-controlling ruler. For example, a despot does not allow people to speak out against the leadership, nor really want them to have much freedom at all.

The word despot came into English in the sixteenth century from Old French, but it traces all the way back to the Greek word despotes, meaning "master of a household, lord, absolute ruler." The word is often used to describe someone who abuses power and oppresses others. Obviously, it's not a nice thing to call someone, especially within earshot of the despot who has absolute power over you'.



'They all want, as Banker magazine noted, "a world in which national policy authority is greatly reduced, and replaced by more powerful international policy-making bodies."'

We have already spent a week shouting out against this move towards GLOBAL ONLINE BANKING.  It is of course being pushed from CALIFORNIA and NYC as our US community banks and credit unions have been targeted by US Treasury fraud and Congressional laws passed during OBAMA to bring down our small and regional banking system......only global Wall Street banks will survive and they will all morph into global online banking. We have refused to go to online banking because of this goal-----but we know if MOVING FORWARD continues everyone will be REQUIRED to do only online banking and that bank will be international. Global Wall Street and a US FED will be merged into international banks and this WORLD CENTRAL BANK.

Each time these financial policies unfold----99% OF WE THE PEOPLE think that's fine----it's more convenient. WAKE UP FOLKS.


Global online banking penetration in April 2012, by region
Percentage of internet audience using online banking45%37.8%28.7%25.1%22%8.8%North AmericaEuropeWorldwideLatin AmericaAsia PacificMiddle East and Africa
0%10%20%30%40%50%
© Statista 2017Show further information
Complete Source Details


 
About This Statistic

This statistic shows the global online banking penetration as of April 2012, by world region. Globally, 423.5 million people accessed online banking sites during April 2012, reaching 28.7 percent of the internet audience. In North America, 45 percent of internet audiences accessed banking sites.

Mobile banking in the U.S. – additional information

Mobile banking allows customers to manage and control their financial accounts and transactions via their mobile device whether this is a mobile phone or tablet.

In November 2015, a separate survey among adults in the U.S. asked its participants; ‘What are the main reasons you have decided not to use mobile banking?’ During the survey, the most popular reason provided, with 87.9 percent of respondents, was that they felt their mobile banking needs were being met without mobile banking. Other popular answers included respondents who didn’t see any reason to use mobile banking and concerns about the security of mobile banking.

In the same survey taken in November 2015, the distribution of mobile payment users in the U.S. in terms of their income group was revealed. Of respondents who earned less than 25,000 U.S. dollars a year, only 15.9 had used mobile payment services. At the other end of the scale, those who earned 100,000 U.S. dollars or more a year made up 29.7 percent of mobile payment users.

____________________________________________
Many Americans have these few decades of watching a United Nations take more control of US policy thought that the IMF AND WORLD BANK is controlled by US since our Federal tax money is sent to support these institutions and since FDR was the founding President of United Nations.  Remember, the global OLD WORLD MERCHANTS OF VENICE 1% still think of US as a colony----those controlling WORLD BANK AND IMF are people working for that global 1% ----not 99% of US citizens.  The IMF/WORLD BANK has been used by the global 1% to create all the world civil unrest and wars each time installing that global Foreign Economic Zone.

Each time they say they are helping the poor----they are bringing a stable economy---when the only goal was creating this ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE structure.  Life for citizens in all nations tied to IMF/WORLD BANK has gotten worse because their rights as sovereign citizens disappeared and because each time an extreme wealth extreme poverty societal structure is installed ----that 1% inside that nation.

This has now been staged for WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% by these several years of massive US TREASURY BOND debt fraud with states loading as well with municipal bond debt all to take down the US dollar.


Even though IMF and World Bank are supported largely with US taxpayer money---these are not people tied to American sovereignty---we are one more economic colony.

The IMF and the World BankMay 16, 2017
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are institutions in the United Nations system. They share the same goal of raising living standards in their member countries. Their approaches to this goal are complementary, with the IMF focusing on macroeconomic issues and the World Bank concentrating on long-term economic development and poverty reduction.


What are the purposes of the Bretton Woods Institutions?


The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were both created at an international conference convened in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States in July 1944. The goal of the conference was to establish a framework for economic cooperation and development that would lead to a more stable and prosperous global economy. While this goal remains central to both institutions, their work is constantly evolving in response to new economic developments and challenges.


The IMF’s mandate.

The IMF promotes international monetary cooperation and provides policy advice and capacity development support to help countries build and maintain strong economies. The IMF also makes loans and helps countries design policy programs to solve balance of payments problems when sufficient financing on affordable terms cannot be obtained to meet net international payments. IMF loans are short and medium term and funded mainly by the pool of quota contributions that its members provide. IMF staff are primarily economists with wide experience in macroeconomic and financial policies.


The World Bank’s mandate.

The World Bank promotes long-term economic development and poverty reduction by providing technical and financial support to help countries reform certain sectors or implement specific projects—such as building schools and health centers, providing water and electricity, fighting disease, and protecting the environment. World Bank assistance is generally long term and is funded both by member country contributions and through bond issuance. World Bank staff are often specialists on particular issues, sectors, or techniques.


Framework for cooperation

The IMF and World Bank collaborate regularly and at many levels to assist member countries and work together on several initiatives. In 1989, the terms for their cooperation were set out in a concordat to ensure effective collaboration in areas of shared responsibility.



High-level coordination.

During the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the IMF and the World Bank, Governors consult and present their countries’ views on current issues in international economics and finance. The Boards of Governors decide how to address international economic and financial issues and set priorities for the organizations.


A group of IMF and World Bank Governors also meet as part of the Development Committee, whose meetings coincide with the Spring and Annual Meetings of the IMF and the World Bank. This committee was established in 1974 to advise the two institutions on critical development issues and on the financial resources required to promote economic development in low-income countries.


Management consultation.

The Managing Director of the IMF and the President of the World Bank meet regularly to consult on major issues. They also issue joint statements and occasionally write joint articles, and have visited several regions and countries together.Staff collaboration. IMF and Bank staffs collaborate closely on country assistance and policy issues that are relevant for both institutions. The two institutions often conduct country missions in parallel and staff participate in each other’s missions. IMF assessments of a country’s general economic situation and policies provide input to the Bank’s assessments of potential development projects or reforms. Similarly, Bank advice on structural and sectoral reforms is considered by the IMF in its policy advice. The staffs of the two institutions also cooperate on the conditionality involved in their respective lending programs.


The 2007 external review of Bank-Fund collaboration led to a Joint Management Action Plan on World Bank-IMF Collaboration (JMAP) to further enhance the way the two institutions work together. Under the plan, Fund and Bank country teams discuss their country-level work programs, which identify macroeconomic and sectoral issues, the division of labor, and the work needed in the coming year. A review of Bank-Fund Collaboration underscored the importance of these joint country team consultations in enhancing collaboration.


Reducing debt burdens.


The IMF and World Bank have also worked together to reduce the external debt burdens of the most heavily indebted poor countries under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI).


They continue to help low-income countries achieve their development goals without creating future debt problems. IMF and Bank staff jointly prepare country debt sustainability analyses under the Debt Sustainability Framework (DSF) developed by the two institutions.


Reducing poverty.

In 1999, the IMF and the World Bank launched the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach as a key component in the process leading to debt relief under the HIPC Initiative and an important anchor in concessional lending by the Fund and the Bank. While PRSPs continue to underpin the HIPC Initiative, the World Bank and the IMF adopted in July 2014 and July 2015, respectively, new approaches to country engagement that no longer requires PRSPs. The IMF streamlined its requirement for poverty reduction documentation for programs supported under the Extended Credit Facility (ECF) or the Policy Support Instrument (PSI).


Setting the stage for the 2030 development agenda.

Between 2004 and 2015 the IMF and the Bank jointly published the annual Global Monitoring Report (GMR), which assessed progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2015, with the replacement of the MDGs with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the 2030 Global Development Agenda, the IMF and the Bank have actively engaged in the global effort to support the Development Agenda. Each institution has committed to new initiatives, within their respective remits, to support member countries in reaching their SDGs. They are also working together to better assist the joint membership, including by an enhanced support of stronger tax systems in developing countries.


Assessing financial stability. The IMF and the World Bank are also working together to make financial sectors in member countries resilient and well regulated. The Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) was introduced in 1999 to identify the strengths and vulnerabilities of a country's financial system and recommend appropriate policy responses.

_________________________________________

'Preparing to rebuild the international economic system while World War II was still raging'

This is why the start of WW 1 and WW 2 seems planned as an aftermath of the LAST ROBBER BARON FRAUDS during early 1900s AND it is why we shout that all this RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA is simply the same false actions being taken as an excuse for a WW3 after this coming ROBBER BARON fraud.  History does repeat itself.  So, these global NGOs in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones are indeed geared to creating these civil unrest tensions and promoted the FAKE reasons for war.  Sadly they were preparing the financial institutions for reparations while the wars were raging.  This is why we must look more closely at BRUTAL FASCISTS LEADERS who suddenly appear just as a WORLD ORDER is being installed.  Hitler/Stalin/MAO all installed by global 1% having nothing to do with left MARXISM.


This is why the US FED was installed in early 1900s ----and this was the beginning of the assault on our national sovereignty. We have known these ONE WORLD policy goals have existed from mid-twentieth century but it was drowned in CONSPIRACY theory claims by national media and global Wall Street 5% to the 1%.


The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial and financial relations among the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia and Japan in the mid-20th century. The Bretton Woods system was the first example of a fully negotiated monetary order intended to govern monetary relations among independent states. The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate (± 1 percent) by tying its currency to gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. Also, there was a need to address the lack of cooperation among other countries and to prevent competitive devaluation of the currencies as well.


Preparing to rebuild the international economic system while World War II was still raging, 730 delegates from all 44 Allied nations gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States, for the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference, also known as the Bretton Woods Conference. The delegates deliberated during 1–22 July 1944, and signed the Bretton Woods agreement on its final day. Setting up a system of rules, institutions, and procedures to regulate the international monetary system, these accords established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which today is part of the World Bank Group.

_________________________________________

Here is NIXON putting into place that same ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE ONE WORLD CENTRAL BANK back in 1971----remember, Nixon went to China to 'OPEN' China to the idea of installing FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES so US corporations could leave US and take down its economy.  TRICKY DICKY was more than just dishonest.

All this fancy financial talk simply means this-----our US dollar was deliberately made FIAT CURRENCY when gold standard was removed---our currency simply had no backing placing total control of monetary value on CENTRAL BANKING.



'On 15 August 1971, the United States unilaterally terminated convertibility of the US dollar to gold, effectively bringing the Bretton Woods system to an end and rendering the dollar a fiat currency.[3] This action, referred to as the Nixon shock, created the situation in which the US dollar became a reserve currency used by many states. At the same time, many fixed currencies (such as the pound sterling, for example) also became free-floating'.


As we see below the goal of FIAT-MONEY is to create the structure for value swings and in this case HYPER-INFLATION----MUGABE did the same to his citizen in Zimbabwean hyper-inflation---it is simply a tool to kill all the wealth in a nation for the 99% of citizens.


Loss of backing

A fiat-money currency greatly loses its value should the issuing government or central bank either lose the ability to, or refuse to, further guarantee its value. The usual consequence is hyperinflation. Some examples where this has occurred are the Zimbabwean dollar, China in 1945 and the Mark in the Weimar Republic in 1923.

So, NIXON set the stage for what became the ROBBER BARON CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA------in destabilizing global economy with the US FED working with the IMF/WORLD BANK.

The global Wall Street crowd shout constantly about the benefits of FIAT MONEY-----taking down the GOLD STANDARD.  Know what that goal was?  Do we see it today?  Today we have a US Treasury soaked in debt unable to back its currency and not a drop of GOLD ON HAND FOR OUR FEDERAL TREASURY to back this debt.  It deliberately created the ability to bankrupt a national economy.  The GOLD STANDARD kept America's economy stable and honest.

So, where is America's gold reserves?  Much were privatatized to global 1%.  This is what will leave the US with no financial leg to stand on.  Now, all these privatizations of all that is public---is another gutting of America's wealth again leaving WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% without a dime of financial backing. 

This is why Obama and his US Treasury Secretaries GEITHNER AND LEW-----had to create a massive $20 trillion in US debt----with the US FED Bernanke fueling this bond fraud with manipulated interest rates and inflation.  Basically, the global 1% has bought all the gold in Western nations and have it in vaults tied to World Bank/IMF. They are forcing this goal of ONE WORLD ONE WORLD BANK.


ALL DELIBERATE AND ALL DONE BY OUR US PRESIDENTS----THOSE OLD WORLD MERCHANT OF VENICE GLOBAL 1% .

Fiat Currency: What It Is and Why It's Better Than a Gold Standard

The value of money has to be has to be based on something of value. A fiat currency (or fiat money) is one example.
Jason Hall
(TMFVelvetHammer)
Dec 6, 2015 at 6:00AM

The gold standard-versus-fiat currency debate will be waged for years to come. 
This article was updated on Jan. 4, 2017

"In God we trust. All others pay cash."
--Anonymous

The most important thing about money is this: People need to be able to count on its value, and that value needs to be stable over time. For that reason, many countries have, over the past century, shifted to a fiat currency. 


But what exactly is fiat currency, and what makes it the best alternative? Let's take a closer look. 
Underpinning the value of money Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it. The U.S. dollar is fiat money, as are the euro and many other major world currencies. 


This approach differs from money whose value is underpinned by some physical good such as gold or silver, called commodity money. The United States, for example, used a gold standard for most of the late 19th and early 20th century. A person could exchange U.S. currency -- as well as many public and even some private debts --  for gold as late as 1971.


A fiat currency's value is underpinned by the strength of the government that issues it, not its worth in gold or silver. 
Why a fiat currency is better economic policy  Here's a look at U.S. inflation since the beginning of the 20th century:


US Inflation Rate data by YCharts.


The most important aspect of a currency is the relative stability of its value. And while there are certainly more aspects to inflation than just the currency standard, it's a major factor in monetary policy and a government's ability to control the money supply. 


The U.S. dollar -- as well as many public and private debts -- could be converted into gold until the mid-1930s, and the U.S. dollar was tied to the value of gold until the early 1970s, when President Nixon completely severed the relationship between the U.S. dollar and gold. With the exception of the late 1970s' and early 1980s' oil crisis and recession, inflation has become much less volatile, and deflation hasn't been an issue. 


A key reason is U.S. monetary policy. Since the Federal Reserve has more flexibility to control supply and demand of currency, it is more able to limit the impact of major economic shocks, such as the financial crisis of 2008-2009. Many economists acknowledge that the government's ability to control the supply of currency played a major role in keeping the crisis -- easily the worst in 80 years -- from causing even greater harm to the American and global economy. 


What gold advocates ignore  Those who advocate for a gold or similar standard often use the argument that fiat currencies aren't really "worth" anything, since there isn't anything tangible that underpins its value. That's really not a very accurate description of a fiat currency, versus a gold standard. Simply put, the value of any currency, whether a commodity or a fiat currency, is only relative to what people think it's worth. 


And gold hasn't exactly been stable or reliable in recent years:


Gold Price in US Dollars data by YCharts.


What does that chart tell us? In times of uncertainty, people hoard gold. You can see it in the early '80s oil crisis and recession and the most recent financial crisis, when gold prices soared, only to fall sharply once the overall economic environment improved. 


This situation is largely what led Franklin D. Roosevelt to sever the convertibility of U.S. currency and debt into gold during the Great Depression. Under the gold standard (especially when currency could be converted to gold), hoarding gold had a direct impact on monetary flow, hurting commerce and exacerbating recessions. By severing the link between gold reserves and currency, the Federal Reserve is better able to combat major economic shocks to the economy. 


Think gold is a great investment? Historically, it really hasn't been:


Gold Price in US Dollars data by YCharts.



The U.S. stock market has been a far superior long-term investment since Nixon severed the relationship between gold and the dollar in the 1970s. And since September 2012, gold has fallen 30%, while the S&P 500 has seen total returns of more than 77%.

OH, REALLY????



Stability is key It's fair to argue that the Federal Reserve's efforts to limit the impact of economic crisis could have unforeseen long-term effects, based on the additional money that has been put in circulation, versus a gold or silver standard that limits how much money circulates. The problem gets back to times of major economic crisis: When governments need tools to stop or reduce the harm, a commodity standard has historically had the opposite effect as people hoard it. 


By severing the tie between a commodity that people tend to hoard in times of crisis and the value and supply of money, a fiat currency is a better alternative, but only so long as those pulling the levers of monetary supply keep the balance between supply and demand stable. 


Here's the bottom line: Currency is a tool of trade. People tend to hoard gold and silver when things are uncertain, and that's harmful when it limits currency flows on a large scale. Removing the relationship between a currency and commodity doesn't create "worthless money."


It simply keeps panic from causing greater economic harm in times of crisis when people hoard the underpinning of a commodity currency and stop the wheels of commerce. And that makes a fiat currency far better than a gold standard. 

__________________________________________
We hear all the time in Baltimore ----ground zero for ONE WORLD ONE GOVERNANCE how Nixon was great----how FIAT MONEY was great-----and we do not believe the 5% to the 1% saying all this KNOW WHAT ALL THIS MEANS.

Basically, Bretton Woods created the platform for global banking under a stable Gold Standard---and Nixon simply pulled the rug on safe banking ----just as Clinton did in 1990s breaking Glass Steagall.  If you knew of the ONE WORLD goals stirring in US--- you would have known that was the goal of Nixon in 1970s.



'Under the Bretton Woods system, foreigners could convert their local currencies into US dollars and then exchange these dollars for a certain amount of gold with the US Federal Reserve through the “gold window.” It was not a true gold standard, because governments did not necessarily maintain gold reserves in direct proportion to their currencies in circulation. It was, however, reasonably effective in keeping trade imbalances from forming across global economies and kept currencies tethered to something of fixed value. Here’s a snapshot of the US current account balance in the 10 years preceding the decision to close the gold window'.


'Note that the United States maintained a small surplus before exiting the gold standard. How sad and pathetic that Nixon got away with claiming that there was an urgent problem. Now consider what happened to the US current account balance in the years following the departure from the gold standard'.

FIAT MONEY built the RUG to be pulled out from US economy and Clinton's DEREGULATED LAISSEZ FAIRE created the ability to move all of America's wealth to that global 1% ----including all our GOLD .  We really think people supporting all this think these US Presidents and players are on team UNITED STATES when they are on team global 1%.

It wasn't until the 1990s with Clinton staging the ROBBER BARON fleecing of America that many American citizens thought all these plans to take down US could be pulled off-----that is why 1990s was the time for massive protests and marches by right wing and left wing citizens---but too many listened to all the CONSPIRACY THEORY stories.



13 March 2013
President Nixon: The Man Who Sold the World Fiat Money

By Ron Rimkus, CFA


Posted In: Economics, History & Geopolitics

Today, the United States lives with federal budget deficits of more than $1 trillion each year, interest rates that are artificially held below market levels, aggregate debt that is growing much faster than the economy, and a chronic trade deficit that is larger than whole industries.


Yet each of these problems could be tamed and mollified, in my view, with a true gold standard. Of course, the world used to be on a type of gold standard known as the Bretton Woods Agreement. Tracing the history of this gold standard and its demise ultimately led me to one man — US President Richard Milhous Nixon — the man who untethered the chord linking currencies to gold; the man who sold the world fiat money.


What happened? How did we get from there to here? And what lessons can we draw from this relatively recent economic history to inform where we should be going?


On 15 August 1971, President Nixon announced to the world that the United States was closing the gold window in a move known as the Nixon Shock. You can watch it here:


Wow. Heady stuff. The American dollar was a “hostage in the hands of international speculators“? Hmmm . . . let’s get back to that. Note the sense of urgency he is creating with his language. “We will press for the necessary reforms to set up an urgently needed new international monetary system.” He then goes on to declare, “I am taking one further step to protect the dollar, to improve our balance of payments, and to increase jobs for America.” So, Tricky Dick (as he was known in politics) presented himself as a protector of the dollar, a warrior against inflation, and a jobs creator. That was his sales pitch. In reality, Nixon was doing the exact opposite, and, according to an analysis by Burton A. Abrams and James L. Butkiewicz of the University of Delaware, Nixon knew it. Thanks to the Nixon Tapes from the White House, we have a looking glass that gives great insight into Nixon’s true thoughts and feelings — and how they differ markedly from what he said publicly.


For instance, despite calling himself a Keynesian, he was also a monetarist — at least to the extent he thought it might help him get elected in 1972. He believed that easy monetary policy could reduce unemployment in the short run and knew that presidents have a hard time getting reelected when unemployment is high. On 26 July 1971, Nixon was captured on tape stating, “I’ve never seen anybody beaten on inflation in the United States. I’ve seen many people beaten on unemployment.” When Nixon took office, unemployment was only 3.4%, but after the recession in 1969–1970, unemployment rose to 6%, where it remained. Given that Nixon had publicly stated that he would improve employment, he was committed to getting the number down by election time. Even the great Milton Friedman, who is on tape urging caution to the president over his desire for easy money, couldn’t persuade him. The tapes further reveal that Nixon arranged credible threats to the then-Fed Chairman Arthur Burns’ power as head of the Federal Reserve, including: adverse leaks about Burns to the public; the appointment of easy-money, pro-Nixon doves to the Fed board; and threats of Burns not being reappointed at the end of his term.


Nixon and his Administration placed repeated pressure on Burns to ease monetary policy in late 1971 and early 1972 — with the goal of reducing unemployment in time for the election. For example, on 19 March 1971, Nixon urged Burns, “We’ve got to think of goosing it [the money supply] . . . late summer and fall of this year [1971] and next year [1972]. As you know, there’s a hell of a lag.” So, the self-fashioned “inflation warrior” pressured the Fed to print money? Say it ain’t so. In one recording, Burns states, “If interest rates go down further through my actions . . . the probability as I see it is, they will go up later on in the year and in 1972. Housing, which is recovering very nicely, will go into a tailspin in 1972. Where will we be, as a country, and as a party and me personally?” Clearly, Burns is warning Nixon of the adverse longer-term consequences of easy money.


By December of 1971, Burns ultimately succumbed to the pressure, reducing the discount rate and accelerating the expansion of money supply. Moreover, the wage and price controls created the illusion of stability against a powerful backdrop of easy money. So much for the independence of the Fed. So much for the inflation warrior. So much for the defender of the US dollar. So much for the creator of jobs. These tapes clearly reveal that Nixon was looking out for himself at the expense of long-term benefits for the country and — because of the international monetary system — the world.


So, ignoring what Nixon said publicly, what did his policies actually do? Nixon’s package of proposals included:

• Closing the gold window (elimination of the Bretton Woods gold standard).
• Letting the dollar float.
• Placing a temporary freeze on prices and wages to “combat inflation.”
• Placing a temporary 10% tariff on imports to “improve balance of payments.”

Under the Bretton Woods system, foreigners could convert their local currencies into US dollars and then exchange these dollars for a certain amount of gold with the US Federal Reserve through the “gold window.” It was not a true gold standard, because governments did not necessarily maintain gold reserves in direct proportion to their currencies in circulation. It was, however, reasonably effective in keeping trade imbalances from forming across global economies and kept currencies tethered to something of fixed value. Here’s a snapshot of the US current account balance in the 10 years preceding the decision to close the gold window.

United States Current Account Balance % GDP (1961–1970)


Sources: St. Louis Federal Reserve, CFA Institute.

Note that the United States maintained a small surplus before exiting the gold standard. How sad and pathetic that Nixon got away with claiming that there was an urgent problem. Now consider what happened to the US current account balance in the years following the departure from the gold standard.

United States: Current Account Balance % GDP (1960–2011)


Sources: St. Louis Federal Reserve, CFA Institute.

Just as both Arthur Burns and Milton Friedman had warned, in the years immediately following this new policy, the world endured sharply rising inflation and elevated interest rates — and the balance of payments swung from a persistent surplus to a chronic deficit.


Had Bretton Woods remained intact, these events would not have happened. Under a gold standard, trade deficit countries (such as the United States today) pay trade surplus countries in gold to compensate them for the exchange of goods. This is the balancing mechanism of a gold standard, and it prevents countries from misallocating capital. Under the floating exchange rate system, if countries should let their currencies float, exchange rates would change until trade deficits and surpluses shrink toward zero.


For Nixon, departing from the gold standard meant that the Fed was free to expand monetary policy much more easily. For the United States, it meant that trade gaps need not be resolved — ever — which is why we see the emergence of persistent, large, and growing trade deficits in the United States. Lastly, for the rest of the world, the loss of the gold exchange standard meant that they could maintain persistent trade surpluses with countries like the United States and thereby increase local employment and trade off exchange rates and inflation.


Under a floating exchange system, if country A fails to print as much currency as country B, either their currency appreciates or they experience inflation “imported” from country B. Escalating government debt, however, can help offset this inflation. Have you ever considered what might happen to inflation if a government never raised any federal debt and simply printed every dollar (or other currency unit) that they required to meet their spending needs on a pay-as-you-go basis? All else being equal, inflation would be greater. Likewise, as government debt rises, inflation is less than it otherwise would be. So, you can think of government debt as a reservoir of potential future inflation.


Consequently, after the departure from Bretton Woods, countries could afford to be more lax about exchange rate policy. For countries that maintained their peg to the dollar, easy money in the United States meant inflation at home. However, to the degree they were willing to use debt, they could mollify the effects of monetary inflation. Over time, the United States has used easy monetary policy in part to foster economic growth and in part to finance yawning federal budget deficits. The consequence of all this has been an ever-increasing debt load relative to GDP, standing at about 358% total debt to GDP today. Of that, government debt is now greater than GDP at over $16 trillion.


Nevertheless, until recently, each additional dollar of government debt could at least grow aggregate GDP — even if the ROI was weak. This is no longer true as incremental debt is proving to displace other forms of spending. Interest rates can not get much lower and the debt burden can not get much higher without unleashing the kinetic energy of the latent inflation stored within.


Ever since the fateful day that Nixon announced he was closing the gold window, the United States and the rest of the world have been operating on a fiat monetary system (meaning money is not backed by gold or anything else). Consequently, trade deficits and surpluses are persistent, and gold no longer stands between the politicians and the value of a currency.


As with credit markets, trust is at the core of a fiat monetary system. Should that trust deteriorate, the value of a currency can change rapidly. If and when that trust deteriorates, it happens quickly. The current system has made the value of the dollar a hostage to politicians, not to the currency markets or “international speculators,” as Nixon wanted the public to believe.


Over the years, whole countries (typically in developing economies) have built much of their economies around exports back to the developed world, including countries like the United States, who in turn are net importers — naturally creating vested interests in the status quo. Excluding services, which currently run an annual surplus, and focusing only on goods, the United States runs an approximately $700 billion trade deficit annually.


Assuming that US businesses on average could produce these goods — which they would under a gold standard — for about $200,000 in revenue per employee, the United States would create about 3.5 mm new jobs. But rather than fix the monetary system, today’s Federal Reserve is pursuing very aggressive monetary policy by which they have more than tripled the monetary base in just the last four and half years and pushed interest rates down to near zero.


Today’s massive trade imbalances, ongoing trillion dollar budget deficits, and the escalation of debt and money printing only makes the system more and more unstable. That’s a harsh and lasting legacy of a slick salesman — all so that he could get reelected. Of course, no system is perfect, and certainly the Bretton Woods system as well as a classical gold standard are imperfect too. However, we can protect the value of our currencies, improve the balance of payments worldwide, and increase jobs and real economic growth. Just like Tricky Dick said. Only this time, with a gold standard. It’s not too late.

______________________________________


'The remaining 95 percent of U.S. Treasury gold ($10.4 billion in book value) is held in custody for the Treasury by the U.S. Mint'.

13 October 2009

How Much Gold Does the US Have In Its Reserves?

Looking around the web, and considering some recent questions regarding gold and SDRs on the Fed's and Treasury's balance sheets and reserve statements, I came across quite a bit more confusion and misinformation than one might have expected to find on what should be a fairly straightfoward question, ranging from completely incorrect but precise numbers to 'shitloads' at Yahoo!Answers.

So, I spent some time reading the relevant source documents, and have decided to publish this little fact sheet here, so that one might at least be able to find some of the basic facts about the US gold holdings on the books of the Treasury and the Fed in one place, with references.

There is also a little detail about the SDRs. It should be noted that because SDRs may be added to the Treasury's books, as in the recent allocation from the IMF, it does not mean necessarily that they are monetized by the Fed and placed on their own balance sheet.

Not getting into issues of where the gold is, what claims there may be on it, and what fineness it may actually be, according to the US Treasury:

The US currently holds 261,499,000 fine troy ounces in its reserves. US International Reserve Position, US Treasury

The gold is valued on the books at $42.2222 per fine troy ounce.

This represents a total value of $11,041,063,078.

This value appears on the Treasury's International Reserve Position US Treasury on Line 4.

Since there are 32150.7466 troy ounces in a tonne, the US Treasury is holding 8,133.528072 tonnes of fine gold.

Federal Reserve Gold Certificates

The Federal Reserve holds $11,037,000,000 in gold certificates as assets on its Balance Sheet as shown in their weekly H.41 report. The Fed has no physical gold of its own. According to my reading of the relevant law, the Fed is not able to place claims upon or issue those gold certificates to any other entity other than the 12 federal reserve banks.

With regard to the Fed's Gold Certificates here is some history by way of explanation:

Acting under this authority [the Emergency Banking Act of March 9, 1933], the secretary of the Treasury issued orders dated December 28, 1933, and January 15, 1934, the latter requiring all gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates to be delivered to the Treasurer of the United States on or before January 17, 1934.

A new type of gold certificate, series of 1934, in denominations of $100, $1,000, $10,000, and $100,000, was issued only to Federal Reserve banks against certain credits established with the Treasurer of the United States. These certificates are not paid out by Federal Reserve banks and do not appear in circulation. They bear on their face the wording: "This is to certify that there is on deposit in the Treasury of the United States of America dollars in gold, payable to bearer on demand as authorized by law."

Gold certificates, however, have not been printed since January, 1935. Under the Gold Reserve Act of January 30, 1934, all gold held by the Federal Reserve banks was transferred to the U.S. Treasury, in accordance with Presidential Proclamation of January 31, 1934, the former receiving the gold certificate credits on the books of the Treasury at the former statutory price for gold $20.67 per ounce.

Gold assets were valued at $35 per fine troy ounce, giving effect to the devaluation January 31, 1934, until May 8, 1972, when they were revalued at $38 pursuant to the Par Value Modification Act, P.L. 92-268, approved March 31, 1972. The increment amounted to $822 million.
Gold assets were subsequently revalued at $42.22 pursuant to the amendment of Section 2 of the Par Value Modification Act, P.L. 93-110, approved September 21, 1973. This increment amounted to $1,157 million. All of the U.S. Treasury's monetary gold stock valuation, including the preceding revaluation increments, has been monetized by the U.S. Treasury by the issuance to the Federal Reserve banks of $11,160,104,000 for their gold certificate account (total as of close of 1980). In addition, the U.S. Treasury monetized $2,518 million (as of close of 1980) of the U.S. special drawing rights by issuance to the Federal Reserve banks for their special drawing rights certificate account.

On the books of the Federal Reserve banks, neither the gold certificate account nor the special drawing rights certificate account plays any restrictive role in Federal Reserve banks' operations. With the U.S. losing monetary gold in recent years of balance-of-payments deficits, causing decline in gold certificates (credits), two restraints were eliminated: P.L. 89-3, March 3, 1965, eliminated the requirement contained in Section 16 of the Federal Reserve Act for the maintenance of reserves in gold certificates by Federal Reserve banks of not less than 25% against Federal Reserve bank deposit liabilities; and P.L. 90-269, March 18, 1968, eliminated the remaining provision in Section 16 of the Federal Reserve Act under which the Federal Reserve banks were required to maintain reserves in gold certificates of not less than 25% against Federal Reserve notes.

Gold certificates (credits) held by the individual 12 Federal Reserve banks, therefore, merely reflect the total of monetary gold held by the U.S. and also the individual Federal Reserve bank holdings of gold certificates (credits) to their credit on the books of the INTER-DISTRICT SETTLEMENT ACCOUNT. Nevertheless, both the gold certificate account and special drawing rights account at Federal Reserve banks were utilized as eligible assets to serve as part of the 100% collateral pledged with the Federal Reserve agent at each Federal Reserve bank for issues of Federal Reserve notes. (The Depository Institutions Deregulation And Monetary Control Act Of 1980 removed the collateral requirements for Federal Reserve notes held in the vaults of Federal Reserve banks.)

Encyclopedia of Banking & Finance (9th Edition) by Charles J Woelfel

Does any of this amount to a hill of beans? Perhaps, but probably not. At least the next time I need to look up some of these facts and history to explain or correct a question or misunderstanding, I will not have to look all around the web for it again, and wade through many links of incorrect misinformation and rubbish to find it.

This is in no way meant to imply that the Treasury actually possesses the gold it says it has, the fineness of the gold, and the nature of any claims that might be on that gold. This is not a trivial issue as the estimates of the fineness of the gold have shown that a meaningful portin of it may be 'coin melt' and not of deliverable quality unless it has been further refined. It is said that the Bank of England recently discovered that some of their own gold stocks were not suitable for a delivery to the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) for example.

By the way, and just as a point of curiosity, I calculated that if the Fed wished to back its balance sheet with all the gold in the US Treasury, the amount today would be approximately $8,000 per troy ounce. Don't hold your breath. LOL

Some of this may become an issue IF the SDR does become the international reserve currency, and IF gold is added to the mix of its basket of currencies as some countries like China and Russia have requested.

And in a new Google search, How Much Gold Does the US Have In Its Reserves, this little blog pops right up on page one, so its 'mission accomplished.'

And in case you were wondering, here is a recent lineup of official gold reserves from the major countries around the world.

_We will end this week's discussion on immigrant workers and citizenship by bringing a few issues forward from yesterday's posts.

First, we want to recognize Congress passes laws creating loopholes that corporations use as excuses in their involvement with foreign labor brokers.  Global Wall Street pols WANT CORPORATIONS to be free from responsibility so they place the legal obligations of operating under US Rule of Law on a foreign broker. Raise your hand if you understand Congress cannot pass laws that release ANYONE from responsibility of legal oversight.  This is why our US employment system is now controlled by groups called non-profits but are largely tied to the global human capital distribution structure. 

THE PROBLEM WITH THESE IMMIGRANT ENSLAVEMENT, WAGE THEFT, HIRING OF UNDOCUMENTED AND UNTRAINED WORKERS IS ----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA POLS AND PLAYERS.

If US citizens are angry because they are unemployed because of these global systems, or because they are victim of these 'BODY SHOPS' ---hold that 5% to the 1% global Wall Street pol and player accountable.  It really is not a good situation for OPEN BORDERS to allow immigrant workers to fall into this fraudulent and abusive structure and IT IS DELIBERATE.



'Job brokers steal wages and entrap Indian tech workers in US Investigation'

Much of these loopholes are found in the JOBS ACT-----but previous bills always use the words JOBS, JOBS, JOBS.

1. Title III of The JOBS Act Passes: A Major Win for Minority ...www.blackenterprise.com/small-business/jobs-act-win-for... Oct 27, 2013 · The Securities Exchange Commission finally voted to release the proposed rules for Title III of President Obama’s JOBS Act.
   
   The East Indian woman owning that foreign job broker corporation feeding the pipeline of foreign workers slated to be exploited and victimized by fraud would be that MINORITY CONTRACTOR no doubt tied to a US city development contract awarded to a global corporation which then subcontracts and calls these foreign job brokers MINORITY CONTRACTING----AND IN THIS CASE IT IS A WOMEN MINORITY CONTRACTOR.
   
   So, media and all the national GLOBAL WALL STREET 'LABOR AND JUSTICE' ORGANIZATIONS called THE JOBS ACT a win for minorities----AS THEY ALWAYS DO.  If one reads the JOBS ACT---one sees it is filled with these same loopholes freeing global corporations from any responsibility outsourced hiring might bring.  Do our 5% to the 1% global Wall Street players profit from this?  Yes, they aid the BODY SHOP immigrant distribution system with housing, transportation, et al and get a cut of this global BODY SHOP trade.  What WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% need to consider in all this---these same JOB BROKER and BODY SHOP citizens inside US are ready to send US citizens overseas into this same employment nightmare.

Chance Barnett
CEO of @CrowdFunder, Founding Partner @ VC Index Fund, Guitar Lover, Systems Thinker, Wave Slider



May 25, 2016


Why Title III Of The JOBS Act Will Disappoint EntrepreneursThe long awaited Title III of the JOBS Act went into effect Monday, May 16th.



With Title III comes the latest in equity crowdfunding laws that permit non-accredited individuals to invest in private startups and small businesses. Investing was previously restricted to wealthier accredited investors and institutions only.


Title III was originally viewed as a potential game changer for fundraising and access to capital, opening up a new and promising avenue for young startups seeking capital.


As CEO of Crowdfunder, my early work with a small leadership group in Washington D.C. on the JOBS Act legislation had me hopeful that new regulations could greatly increase the opportunity for early-stage business owners to raise capital efficiently online, while also democratizing the access to investing for everyday citizens.


Unfortunately, the final rules under Title III are somewhat limiting and inefficient, given their intent. I believe that Title III will be a disappointment to entrepreneurs in their cost and requirements. Additionally, I believe we will see some adverse selection around Title III offerings, given that early indications in the market are showing that the majority of high quality startups that receive investment from experienced Angels and Venture Capital firms are holding off and may avoid utilizing this new equity crowdfunding alternative.


Before I delve into why, let me provide some background on the JOBS Act and Title III.


JOBS Act Background


The Jumpstart our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) was signed into law by President Obama on April 5, 2012, and represents an easing of security regulations intended to increase the funding that flows to small businesses in the United States, while opening up participation to everyday citizens. Title III sets up new regulations for equity crowdfunding, opening up the investment platform to non-accredited investors or “the crowd”.


Prior to Title III, this type of investment was open only to accredited investors — individuals who earn more than $200,000 per year or have a net worth of over $1 Million.



Alternatively, Title II of the JOBS Act created a relatively efficient method for startups to fundraise and access capital with accredited investors and institutions. Over two years after Title II has gone live, we’re seeing the funding volume roughly double year over year.


The difference in Title II was the relatively light weight regulatory requirements as compared with traditional offline methods of private capital fundraising under Regulation D 506(b) exemptions.


Currently, platforms like Crowdfunder, CircleUp, and AngelList provide Title II fundraising routes for startups which, in private offerings, require virtually little or no additional compliance requirements beyond their existing Reg D 506(b) offering.


Title III Highlights For Entrepreneurs

• Startups can raise up to $1 Million in a 12 month period
• Offerings must be made via Broker-Dealer or Portal Intermediary
• Businesses must provide detailed disclosures of corporate and financial information
• Less than $100K — sign off from company officer
• $100K — $500K — reviewed by public accountants
• $500K+ — first time fundraisers must be reviewed by public accountant, others must submit a full audit

Title III Highlights for Investors

• Investors making <$100,000 per year can invest $2,000 or 5% of annual income, whichever is greater
• Investors making >$100,000 per year can invest up to 10% of their annual income (SEC Guidelines)

Given that background, I see two barriers to the wide adoption of Title III by entrepreneurs: 1) the limit on fundraising amount and 2) the costs associated with fundraising. I believe that these hurdles will disqualify equity crowdfunding as a fundraising option for viable startups. Because of this, the overall quality of deal flow offered to non-accredited investors will be low.


Barrier: Limit on Fundraising Amount


As noted above, under Title III, startups can raise up to $1 Million in a 12 month period. This fails to account for the dramatic evolution of the seed round since the creation of the JOBS Act in 2012. The venture landscape is always evolving and has changed substantially in the past four years. Many current startups seek pre-seed rounds of <$1 Million followed by a seed round which is similar to the Series A of prior years. Companies are seeking seed rounds after they’ve already built a prototype and assembled a team, and seek to establish revenue and models for their market.


Due to these changes, the requirements on a company seeking Series A funding have grown. Startups are tasked with building strong product traction prior to a Series A round which requires more runway in terms of seed investment. The hiring bubble has yet to burst, and the cost of technical talent continues to grow, adding to the cost to compete for early-stage companies. To provide some perspective, the median seed round in 2015 was $2 Million compared to $750K in 2012. This number will continue to rise, with 2016 seed projections averaging at $2.5 Million.



In this changing venture landscape, the $1 Million cap of Title III fails to account for current startup funding needs. Several interested parties requested the SEC adjust the regulation to a $5 Million cap. Unfortunately, this suggestion was not entertained and the final rules maintain the $1 Million cap. Companies have the option of running a Regulation D raise in parallel, working with accredited investors. This adds complications to an already arduous process for bootstrapped early-stage startups. In addition, it is unlikely that the majority of accredited investors would choose to participate in a simultaneous Reg D and equity crowdfunding campaign. The liability implications of investing alongside non-accredited investors is not yet known and therefore a deterrent to accredited investors interested in participating in a fundraising round. Given the fundraising limits, I feel Title III is a non-starter for early-stage companies.


Barrier: Upfront Cost for Crowdfunding

Funds are limited for all startups, especially those in the early stages of development. Unfortunately, the costs associated with fundraising via Title III are astronomical compared to traditional methods. On average, a Title III fundraising campaign could cost as much as $50-$100K. The new SEC regulations require businesses seeking to conduct an equity crowdfunding campaign to comply with a lengthy set of regulations far beyond Regulation D offerings that angels invest in regularly.


The SEC estimates this compliance process will require, on average, 100 work hours from various in-house and outsourced professionals including accountants and lawyers. This is likely an underestimation given the heavy regulations laid out in Title III.


In addition to compliance costs, startups also need to account for the fees associated with crowdfunding portals and broker-dealers. For a successful campaign, businesses pay a success fee of approximately 7–10% of the raised amount. On top of compliance costs and fundraising fees, entrepreneurs are responsible for the cost of a CPA review or full audit, which ranges from as low as $20,000 and to as high as $70,000 depending on the amount raised.


As noted above, under Title III, startups that raise between $100-$500K are required to be reviewed by public accountants and those that raise over $500K must undergo a full audit. Fortunately, the SEC did choose to adjust the full audit requirement for first time fundraisers, allowing them to be reviewed by outside accountants only. Although an improvement, this is still a big cost for early-stage startups.


There is a huge disparity between the upfront costs of a Title III versus Regulation D raise. For a startup seeking $1 Million in investment, the estimated cost for a Reg D raise is $15K versus $100K for a Title III raise. The $100K includes an average 7% Broker-Dealer or Portal Success Fee ($70K) in addition to $30K for compliance costs in the form of SEC Filings, Legal Disclosures and Audited Financials. It should be noted, for a Title III raise the $30K in compliance costs is an upfront expense that is not refunded if the crowdfunding campaign is unsuccessful. Provided the heavy regulation and high upfront costs of crowdfunding vs. traditional fundraising, it is steep barrier to entry for entrepreneurs.


Bottom Line

The ultimate goal of the JOBS Act was to infuse capital into the small businesses that account for 65% of job growth in the United States. Ultimately, the equity crowdfunding portion of the bill fell short, creating too many regulatory hurdles to appeal to high-growth startups. Given the barriers to entry, I don’t foresee top-tier startups adopting equity crowdfunding as a fundraising outlet. The SEC estimates 1,900 businesses will seek funding through equity crowdfunding, accounting for less than 2% of the total annual funded deals. This substantially limits the deal flow available to non-accredited investors.


Bottom line, the crowd won’t be investing in the next Facebook or Uber with Title III, and the majority of entrepreneurs will continue to target fundraising campaigns led by VCs and accredited investors because it is faster and more efficient.
______________________________________
Below we see to where the OBAMA JOBS ACT is taking immigration law and employment.  Remember, those UNITED NATIONS protests for women and Muslims are tied to these global job brokerage and foreign corporations coming to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES-----this abuse is widespread---from Latino to African ----from  Middle-East to Asian workers caught in this criminal global human capital distribution system built by Clinton Initiative.


'The dark side of immigration reform: A new "guest worker program" that's as close as we may get to modern slavery'


MOVING FORWARD continues the complete deregulation of Federal, state, and local laws leaving global corporations supposedly not responsible for any outsourced tie to foreign corporations and their employees.  Of course many of these foreign job broker corporations are fly-by-night geared to go out of business before any worker or justice department can get financial/legal restitution.  This has been the law of the land in Foreign Economic Zones overseas filled with these fraudulent and abusive labor structures.  MOVING FORWARD brings all that to US---it has been here these few decades but laws are now being passed to make it all APPEAR LEGAL---WHICH IT IS NOT UNDER US CONSTITUTION AND FEDERAL LABOR LAWS.


WHO LEADS IN THESE POLICIES GLOBALLY?  CLINTON GLOBAL WALL STREET NEO-LIBERALS----WHO SUPPORTS CLINTON NEO-LIBERALS THESE FEW DECADES----OUR GLOBAL WALL STREET 'LABOR AND JUSTICE' ORGANIZATIONS.



'Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won’t take up their cause'.



Tuesday, Jan 29, 2013 11:00 PM EDT

Immigration, yes. Indentured serfdom, no

The dark side of immigration reform: A new "guest worker program" that's as close as we may get to modern slavery

Michael Lind


A young boy watches his migrant worker motherwhile she picks grape tomatoes in Rocky Point, N.C. (Credit: AP/Jeffrey A. Camarati)


The outlines of a bipartisan plan for immigration reform have been announced by a group of senators. While most of its provisions are reasonable — a path to citizenship for most illegal immigrants, increased skilled immigration and increased law enforcement — one provision stinks to high heaven and should be rejected by Americans of left, right and center. That provision is a massive, special-interest-driven expansion of indentured servitude in the United States, in the form of a new “guest-worker program.” (President Obama, while hailing the plan in general on Tuesday, has not weighed in on the specifics of the guest-worker program.)


Indentured servitude or contract labor, like slavery, is a form of unfree labor. Unfortunately, the U.S., having abolished slavery, still has pockets of indentured servant labor. Whether relatively well-paid, like many highly educated H-1B workers, or poorly paid, like many H-2A agricultural workers, indentured servants are, in effect, indentured serfs. Because their presence in the U.S. is dependent on their employment by a particular employer, they cannot quit and are motivated to appease their employer, no matter how brutally they are exploited. If they protest maltreatment, they can be fired and forced to return to their home countries.


Many indentured servants also are compelled to pay exorbitant amounts of their salaries to contractors who act as intermediaries between them and their sponsor employers, like the notorious “body shops” that exploit many H-1b workers.  Having fleeced and otherwise cheated the guest workers, these body shops often threaten to sue their victims when they become eligible for green cards and quit, on the basis of fine print in documents that the guest workers were earlier forced to sign.


Most Americans, not knowing the technicalities of immigration law, can be bamboozled by corporate lobbyists and propagandists who seek to blur the distinction between guest workers and legal permanent residents with “green cards.” But green card holders — some of them former indentured servants who have earned green cards, after years of exploitation — have economic rights that guest workers do not, the rights that make up the core of the notion of “free labor” in the U.S. and other societies. While legal permanent residents do not have the right to vote, they have the right to quit their jobs without being deported. The psychological difference is profound — a foreign national working in the U.S. with a green card does not have to cringe and grovel before an employer, as an indentured guest worker is compelled to do, out of fear.


The draft bipartisan proposal reads: “Our proposal will provide businesses with the ability to hire lower-skilled workers in a timely manner when Americans are unavailable or unwilling to fill those jobs.”  In theory, employers of guest workers are already supposed to prove that no American citizens or legal permanent immigrants are available to perform a job. In practice, this is a joke. Employers in industries that use guest workers routinely turn to body shops for foreign indentured servants, with only token gestures of advertising the jobs.


These Democratic and Republican senators, echoing the well-paid lobbyists for indentured serfdom, few if any of whom are in danger of being deported if they displease their bosses, promise that abuses can be prevented, by including stronger standards in new indentured serf programs. But if the federal government, corrupted by pressure from powerful business lobbies, does not enforce today’s laws, why should we expect pro-guest-worker laws to be enforced in the future — particularly if an increase is guest workers is successfully extorted from the federal government by lobbyists and donors representing agribusiness and Silicon Valley?



In a 2007 report titled “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States,” the Southern Poverty Law Center described the existing H-2 guest worker program, which would presumably be a model for any expanded agricultural guest worker program included in a bipartisan immigration bill:



Federal law and U.S. Department of Labor regulations provide some basic protections to H-2 guestworkers — but they exist mainly on paper. Government enforcement of their rights is almost non-existent. Private attorneys typically won’t take up their cause.



Bound to a single employer and without access to legal resources, guestworkers are:


• routinely cheated out of wages;
• forced to mortgage their futures to obtain low-wage, temporary jobs;
• held virtually captive by employers or labor brokers who seize their documents;
• forced to live in squalid conditions; and,
• denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries.



House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel recently put it this way: “This guestworker program’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to slavery.”
In 2010, Mother Jones published an exposé of the corrupt H-2A agricultural guest worker program, entled “Bound for America”:



Several recent court cases document how easily guest-worker status devolves into forced labor. In one 2009 case, US v. Sou, three Hawaii growers were indicted for bringing in 44 Thai workers, pocketing a portion of their recruitment fees, then “maintaining their labor at the farm through threats of serious economic harm,” according to the Justice Department. In another case, Asanok v. Million Express Manpower, Thai and Indonesian workers alleged that they had been promised well-paying, steady farmwork in North Carolina, only to find themselves housed in a Katrina-damaged New Orleans hotel, demolishing the building by day and sleeping in what remained at night, going so hungry they sometimes trapped pigeons for dinner. The list could go on, with several cases filed each year for as long as the US has deployed guest-worker schemes.



Instead of expanding indentured servitude in America, we should be putting it on the path to permanent extinction, like slavery, segregated labor and child labor. There are two compelling arguments for abolishing indentured serfdom in the U.S.: one economic, one political.



The economic argument is that indentured serfdom, by allowing agribusiness to pay poverty wages to workers, has bad macroeconomic effects and bad microeconomic effects.  With respect to macroeconomics, guest-worker serfdom is the opposite of a “Fordist” economy in which workers are paid well enough to purchase the products they made — as Henry Ford’s auto workers could afford Ford automobiles. The low-wage foreign national picking lettuce destined for affluent hipster stores like Fresh Fields and Whole Foods won’t be able to afford it, at a subsistence wage.



This macroeconomic argument might be dismissed, because of the slight contribution to aggregate demand by the minority of all farm workers, including guest workers. The microeconomic argument against low-wage labor of any kind is more persuasive:  It reduces the incentive for American agribusiness to increase its productivity, by investing in labor-saving technology.



Guest-worker programs are in-kind government subsidies to agribusiness. By lowering the cost of a particular input to the production process — in this case, low-wage, non-union foreign labor — the government is subsidizing a particular industry.


A low-wage guest-worker program is not only an example of an industrial policy that “picks winners,” but the stupidest and most destructive kind of industrial policy imaginable: one that favors backward, primitive, labor-intensive productive techniques, over advanced, capital-intensive mechanization and automation. Other countries manage to grow affordable lettuce, tomatoes and other produce without importing serfs to do so. The U.S. can do so as well.



The idea that we Americans will starve, unless our government provides agribusiness with an imported foreign underclass to harvest our food, is pure special interest propaganda, echoed by the uncritical stenographers of the mass media who pass as “reporters” nowadays.  The Washington Post story on the proposed reform deserves a Pulitzer for gullibility: “The framework identifies two groups as deserving of special consideration for a separate and potentially speedier pathway to full citizenship: young people who were brought to the country illegally as minors and agricultural workers whose labor, often at subsistence wages, has long been critical to the nation’s food supply. [emphasis added].”



By providing in-kind labor subsidies to particular favored economic sectors, U.S. guest-worker programs intervene in the market on behalf of employers and at the expense of workers. Adam Smith would have agreed with this objection. In “The Wealth of Nations,” he argued that slavery retarded economic growth by reducing the incentives for innovation. And he wrote: “The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen.” Smith would not be surprised that so many American employers pretend they cannot find American citizens or free legal permanent residents to do jobs and demand the right to import unfree contract labor from other countries.



The political argument ought to be decisive. In a democratic republic, free citizen-workers should not be compelled to compete against unfree workers with limited rights — slaves, segregated workers, illegal aliens or contract laborers/guest workers. To put this another way, employers should not be able to engage in a divide-and-rule strategy of pitting different classes of workers, with different levels of rights, against one another in a single U.S. labor market.




Most of the jobs being created in the U.S. today are low-wage jobs with minimal educational requirements in healthcare, recreation and retail. If employer lobbyists succeed in creating a permanent caste of indentured serfs in agribusiness, the lobbies for the healthcare, fast food and hotel lobbies are sure to follow, whining that they cannot find American citizens, or legal permanent resident aliens, to do the work. Free workers in America will be forced to compete with unfree foreign contract laborers, in industry after industry, for the worst jobs in the country.



We can debate what the total amount of legal immigration should be, as well as how it is allotted among categories, including family unification and skills and national quotas. And we can also debate whether, and how, to provide a path to citizenship for many of the millions of illegal immigrants who reside in the U.S. But all Americans who do not profit from exploited labor should agree on one principle, regardless of other partisan differences:  All legal immigrants, and all amnestied illegal immigrants, should have exactly the same workplace rights as American citizen-workers — including the right to quit and take another job in the U.S. A one-tier labor market is in the interest of citizen-workers themselves. There should be no place in the American labor market for a primitive, labor-intensive sub-economy — a modern plantation zone — with a caste of unfree workers.



One of the proudest achievements of the Civil Rights Revolution was the success of civil rights activists and unions in pressuring Congress to abolish the Bracero Program. This exploitative guest-worker program was shut down in 1964, after years of criticism by Latino civil rights groups in the U.S. as well as by the Mexican government. For progressives to cave in to extortion by the sleazy agribusiness lobby on the question of guest-workers, in order to obtain a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, would be an appalling surrender — like agreeing to let businesses revive child labor, as the price of passing reforms to promote childcare and child nutrition.



Employers and investors who insist that they cannot operate in the U.S. if they are forced to employ free citizen-workers or free legal permanent resident immigrants with the right to quit and unionize are the 21st-century equivalent of the unpatriotic and illiberal Southern planter class that preferred slavery and later segregation to free labor. Nineteenth-century abolitionists called the selfish planters the Slave Power. Twenty-first century Americans should call the selfish industries that demand indentured servants instead of free workers what they are: the Serf Power.
Immigration reform should provide a path to citizenship, not a road to serfdom. If Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez were alive, they would be protesting against guest-worker programs, even if they favored other elements of immigration reform.  It would be a tragedy as well as an irony if the first African-American president, in the name of immigration reform, presided over the greatest expansion of unfree labor in the U.S. since the abolition of the Bracero program during the civil rights era.

________________________________________
Baltimore City Council passed laws allowing for expanded tenet presence in apartment buildings calling it DEREGULATION NEEDED FOR BETTER HOUSING POLICY. We wrote more than once how we are now seeing what are flop houses----or what articles are calling BODY SHOPS. Baltimore has a long, long history of slum landlord frauds and abuses---exploitations from white, black, and brown citizens targeting Baltimore's low-income/working class. Now, these same real estate players are ready to join the enslavement of these foreign job brokers and their need for housing while waiting for job openings.We know we are seeing in Baltimore as many as 10 immigrant citizens inside ordinary apartments just as was seen in SILICON VALLEY. No doubt global Wall Street pols call this AFFORDABLE HOUSING.
'Confined to a Guesthouse
A guesthouse is a small apartment or home where as many as eight to ten workers stay at once. A dozen different interviews confirmed that the guesthouses are commonly used by body shops'.


Here is that right wing article---our right wing always pretends it hates undocumented workers and yet-----those Republicans are largely the business owners employing and exploiting our immigrants. Again, the problem is not having immigrants here in US---the problem is the enslavement and exploitation bad for immigrants--bad for US citizens wanting work.
We has shouted the movement calling for SANCTUARY CITIES is the United Nations groups tied to installing OPEN BORDERS and ONE WORLD US CITIES AS FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE policies and yes, without coincidence these are the cities filled with these enslaving structures---FROM BODY SHOPS to FLEECED WAGES---to forced labor ----excelling due to JOBS ACT.
Who is supposed to protect immigrants while inside our borders? US Justice Department----States Attorneys----City Attorneys----who does NOTHING to protect our immigrants from these abuses ----all of the above BUT they all support SANCTUARY CITIES ----for global Wall Street not the immigrant workers.
Who should be fighting all these guest worker abuses----fighting Congressional laws now breaking US Constitution, Federal law, and Bill of Rights? OUR US LABOR SECRETARY PEREZ----Body Shop, foreign job broker fraud, and wage theft soared under PEREZ. PEREZ was Maryland's Department of Labor and Licensing and Maryland HAS NO DLLR ENFORCEMENT.
AS FAR-RIGHT GLOBAL WALL STREET BUSH NEO-CONS PRETEND TO HATE THOSE IMMIGRANTS THEIR CORPORATIONS EMPLOY----OUR FAR-RIGHT WING GLOBAL WALL STREET CLINTON/OBAMA NEO-LIBERALS PRETEND TO PROTECT AND SUPPORT THEM.

Left social progressive shout to our 99% of immigrants---this is NOT the time to be wanting to come to America for work---global Wall Street pols and 5% players are building an entire network having only the goal of enslavement and exploitation---we saw a sign in a window saying IMMIGRANTS--GET RID OF YOUR BOSSES----indeed, US white, black, and brown citizens need to shed their GREEKS AND FREEMASON bosses.

INVASION USA


These 2,000 U.S. companies prefer foreign workers over Americans

Obama coddles 'willful' abusers of visa program who 'actively and publicly prefer' aliensPublished: 11/02/2016 at 11:25 AM
Leo Hohmann

Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina. His latest book is "Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration And Resettlement Jihad."

Disney, which replaced more than 200 of its IT workers with foreigners last year and made their axed American workers train their own replacements, was not listed by the government as a ‘violator’ of the H1-B visa program.


President Obama’s Department of Labor has identified dozens of U.S. employers who are violating the rules of the nation’s foreign guest-worker program, yet are still being allowed to continue replacing American workers with cheaper foreign labor.


The Center for Immigration Studies has published two maps identifying chronic users and abusers of the so-called H1-B visa program.


The first map contains the names of 2,000 employers across the U.S. that are “dependent” on foreign guest workers coming in to fill jobs that would ordinarily be taken by Americans if not for the program, passed by Congress, that allows them to hire foreigners at lower wages. These firms actually prefer foreign workers over Americans.


The second map includes “willful” violators, which are companies that have skirted the rules and abused the program, yet, in most cases have not been barred by Obama’s DOL from continuing to use the program.

This map includes a bevy of technology companies across the country as well as a dairy farm in rural Michigan, a small-town country store in Georgia operated by an Indian owner, and a large public-school district in Maryland. Only about a dozen of these ‘willful’ violators, pinpointed in red on the map, have been barred from continued use of the visa program. Click here to see the names of the companies.


The Center for Immigration Studies, which produced the maps using publicly available data, is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank specializing in immigration issues.


View the interactive maps and see the names of employers addicted to cheap foreign labor.


The  H-1B visa allows employers to hire temporary foreign workers for skilled positions at wages well under the prevailing rates paid to American workers. The foreign workers can stay in the U.S. and work for a single employer for up to six years.
The maps are noteworthy not only for who they name, but for who they don’t name.
Walt Disney Co. was not included on either of the two maps, not the one showing addicted employers or the one showing abusers of the program.  This supports what Sen. Jeff Sessions has said in arguing against the expansion of the H1-B program, that Disney’s actions, seen as egregious by most Americans, were entirely within the rules set out by Congress when it passed the guest-worker laws.


During the GOP primary debates Sen. Marco Rubio, a backer of the H1-B visa program who has lobbied for more than tripling the number of such visas allowed on an annual basis, claimed that companies that replace Americans like Disney were “abusing” the program and should be barred from it.



But the CIS study proves that very few of the “willful violators” are actually barred from the program and others such as Disney are not even seen as abusers.
One employer who was on the list was the Prince Georges County public schools in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.

According to a DOL press release, the school system “illegally reduced the wages of 1,044 foreign teachers hired under the H1-B program” by requiring the foreign teachers to pay $4.2 million in fees. The H1-B program requires employers to pay certain fees for each foreign guest worker but the school district was making the foreign teachers pay the fees instead. It was let off the hook with a $1.7 million fine.

“All employers, including school systems, are required to follow the law. That includes the legal duty to pay every teacher hired the full wages he or she is owed,” said Nancy J. Leppink, acting administrator of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division.


But, with nothing more than a toothless warning and a fine that was less than half of what the school system was required to pay in the first place, the Maryland school district was allowed to continue hiring foreign teachers at wages undercutting the prevailing U.S. wage for teachers.


Even the term “temporary” is a misnomer in the corrupt H1-B program, according to the CIS analysis.
That’s because the three-year visas can be renewed for another three years, and the visas can be kept alive, “virtually forever, if the employer has applied for a permanent immigrant visa for the worker in question.”


The guest workers are also allowed to bring their spouses and children (under H-4 visas) with them to the United States – and under some circumstances these aliens can work legally.


2,000 companies named


The first map identifies 2,000 employers who “actively and publicly prefer alien workers for at least some jobs” to U.S. workers.
“The formal name for this group of employers sounds like it comes from the field of abnormal psychology: they are ‘H-1B dependent,'” said Bryan Griffith and David North, authors of the CIS study.


This is the definition of the term: an employer with 25 full-time workers or fewer, with eight or more of them H-1Bs; with 26-50 workers, there are 13 or more H-1Bs; and with 51 or more there are 15 percent or more H-1Bs. Most users of the H-1B visa, in general, are not H-1B dependent.


The CIS study also notes how companies are able to discriminate in their hiring practices under the H1-B program in ways they ordinarily could not.
“Under U.S. law an employer gets into trouble, appropriately, for discriminating against African-Americans in favor of whites, or Gentiles in preference to Jews, but it is perfectly okay under the law for the same employer to hire alien workers (through the H-1B program) in preference to resident ones,” the authors write. “And if the employer decides that what he really wants, as some do, are twenty-some-odd males from one nation in Asia, that’s okay.


“Many employers are attracted to these workers because they can be paid at below-market wages, and they are docile and less likely to seek better jobs than their American peers.


“The second map shows H-1B employers who are classed as debarred or willful violators. They have, at some point in the past, violated the H-1B rules and have been denied the use of H-1B workers for a period of time. As we pointed out in a report about two years ago the department is, unfortunately, extremely reluctant to put erring employers in either category.”
_______________________________________
We should ask this---why does Congress have to pass a law in order for US Rule of Law to be enforced?  SCRUTINY is what our government agencies are tasked to do.  A functioning DLLR would have long ago solved these problems for both corporations and our immigrant citizens.  There is no attempt in Congress to change ---MOVING FORWARD makes these conditions SOAR.  We can be sure when US workers hit these global labor pool distribution systems Foreign Economic Zones overseas will welcome US workers just as we have welcomed our global labor pool.

'Efforts by Congress to tighten scrutiny of labor brokers during the past decade have failed to gain traction'.

'Under federal regulations, employers that bring in foreign workers must sign contracts attesting that the brokers they use do not charge workers recruitment fees. Fancy Farms did not sign such a contract, according to the lawsuit'.

Global corporations have always used the excuse----WE HAVE WRITTEN GUIDELINES---and because they have those WRITTEN GUIDELINES they are calling themselves COMPLIANT WITH HUMAN RIGHTS.  We see above our Federal labor agencies are doing the same---they say THE LAWS ARE ON THE BOOKS.  FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES overseas has been one great big global labor pool distribution structure JUST LIKE THIS.  When we allow MOVING FORWARD those same 5% to the 1% willing to participate in bringing these immigrants to exploit will be the same ones willing to send our US citizens off to Foreign Economic Zones overseas where WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% will be treated just the same.


'BROKERS KEY TO HIRING
Brokers are active across a variety of visa programs that allow American companies to hire temporary foreign workers. Since the 2007 fiscal year, for instance, Reuters found that intermediaries were involved in helping secure visas for 80 percent of the 2 million foreign workers approved for agricultural and other low-skill jobs'.

Long article---please glance through.



The Middlemen
Wanted: foreign workers — and the labor brokers accused of illegally profiting from them

• By Megan Twohey, Mica Rosenberg and Ryan McNeill
• Filed Feb. 19, 2016, 3:20 p.m. GMT

FAR AFIELD: Using a U.S. visa program, Nestor Molina, left, recruited foreign workers from Honduras to come to these fields in Florida to pick strawberries. Now, Molina faces allegations that he exploited those workers, and attorneys have been unable to locate him.


Vast numbers of foreign workers come to the United States with the help of labor brokers. These middlemen recruit them for temporary jobs. But Reuters found that brokers also can compound abuses workers face even before entering America.


NEW YORK – Nestor Molina has made a living looking for Honduran workers to pick fruit in Florida. Now, some of the workers he recruited, their lawyers, and the U.S. government are looking for him.
Molina, 53, is among the middlemen hired by companies to help bring foreign workers to the United States for temporary jobs.  


The jobs span almost every industry, from agriculture to hospitality, and the numbers of foreign workers brought to the United States have swelled in the past two decades. In the fiscal year ending last August, the government issued more than 350,000 temporary work visas.
Public attention has focused largely on U.S. employers that exploit foreign workers. But Reuters identified an insidious problem that precedes and can compound the abuses workers face when they arrive in America – and one that authorities say can be even more difficult to address.



In more than 200 civil and criminal cases Reuters examined that were filed in federal court, lawyers representing the government and tens of thousands of foreign workers allege myriad misdeeds committed by middlemen such as Molina – labor brokers enlisted by U.S. companies to navigate government bureaucracy, recruit workers, help secure visas, and arrange transportation for those who are hired.


The alleged transgressions range from wage theft to human trafficking. Molina has been accused in a lawsuit by a group of Honduran migrant workers of charging them thousands of dollars apiece in illegal recruitment fees, among other abuses. U.S. authorities told Reuters they are investigating the allegations against Molina, whose whereabouts are unknown and who couldn’t be reached for comment.

One non-profit group that counsels American corporations on labor matters warns its clients that hiring intermediaries to recruit workers increases the likelihood of illicit activity within labor networks. In part, that’s because the brokers operate as independent contractors, essentially answering to no one.


“These brokers are outside anyone’s control,” said Quinn Kepes, a program director at the non-profit group Verite.
Anna Park, an attorney with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who has brought civil cases against brokers and employers on behalf of foreign workers, said the middlemen are hard to hold accountable if workers are exploited.


“These companies are fly-by-night. They are able to secure legitimate visas and operate within the system,” Park said. “When their practices are scrutinized, they often disappear and reinvent as a new company.”


The cases that Reuters examined dated from 2005 to 2015 and describe alleged abuses by labor brokers that began outside America’s borders – in Mexico, India, the Philippines and other countries where brokers recruit.


The cases illustrate how the absence of government oversight has allegedly enabled some brokers to exploit workers – and how intermediaries can insulate U.S. companies, providing them plausible deniability about the circumstances under which workers were recruited.


Fake school helped broker lure workers

By Megan Twohey


Regulators at the U.S. Department of Labor say they have few legal tools and resources to scrutinize the claims made by employers — and brokers — seeking to import foreign workers. That’s how labor broker Kizzy Kalu secured government approval to bring in Filipino nurses under a government visa program, claiming they would be paid up to $72,000 as instructors at Adam University in Colorado, according to a 2012 criminal indictment of the labor broker.


In fact, the university existed in name only. The nurses were farmed out to long-term care companies, according to court records, and Kalu pocketed almost half of their wages and charged thousands of dollars in fees.


In 2014, a Colorado judge sentenced Kalu to 130 months in prison and ordered him to pay $3.7 million in restitution for mail fraud, visa fraud, human trafficking and money laundering. Kalu had made more than $1 million off the scheme.

Efforts by Congress to tighten scrutiny of labor brokers during the past decade have failed to gain traction. In 2013, oversight measures passed the Senate as part of broader package of immigration reforms that later died in the House. The measures were opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, among others. It argued that  adding regulations would do little to prevent wrongdoing and would prove cumbersome and costly for U.S. companies seeking foreign help.



But Randy Johnson, a vice president at the Chamber of Commerce, told Reuters that government oversight of foreign labor brokers is “an area that could use closer examination to get the facts straight and identify the true areas of problems so appropriate solutions can be crafted.”
Federal regulators with the U.S. State Department and the Department of Labor said they have increased oversight of brokers in recent years. But they lament that they have been unable to do more.
“Until we have the authority to hold U.S. employers accountable when they rely on unscrupulous labor recruiters, our ability to deal with these practices remains limited,” a Department of Labor spokesman said in a statement to Reuters.

OH, REALLY?????

Indeed, Reuters found that even if allegations of misconduct come to light, brokers such as Molina have continued to operate.
Last summer, in the largest labor trafficking settlement in U.S. history, Signal International agreed to pay around $20 million to 500 Indian workers brought to Louisiana to work for the marine services company. The settlement came after a federal jury in New Orleans determined that Signal and other defendants, including labor broker Malvern Burnett, engaged in labor trafficking, fraud, and racketeering.


Burnett, who declined to comment, initially contested the ruling but then reached a settlement in the case and dropped his appeal, according to court records.

Today, he continues to operate his New Orleans law firm. Among the services he offers: assistance securing temporary work visas.


BROKERS KEY TO HIRING

Brokers are active across a variety of visa programs that allow American companies to hire temporary foreign workers. Since the 2007 fiscal year, for instance, Reuters found that intermediaries were involved in helping secure visas for 80 percent of the 2 million foreign workers approved for agricultural and other low-skill jobs.

FEELING DUPED: A Honduran worker who was recruited by Nestor Molina remains in the United States under a humanitarian visa. He and other workers say they paid Molina thousands of dollars in fees in order to get the jobs. Collecting such fees from workers violates U.S. visa regulations. REUTERS/Jonathan Bachman



“Everything was a lie. There was no job, no boss, no company. Nothing.”


Foreign worker recruited by labor broker

Some of those middlemen do little more than file government paperwork on behalf of U.S. employers. But Reuters found that many, such as Molina, play a hands-on role in recruiting the workers.



A former car salesman who has recruited workers from Central America, Molina told prospective clients in his promotional materials that he would “go the extra mile to meet your workforce needs.”


According to two lawsuits filed by Florida Legal Services Inc and Florida Rural Legal Services Inc in U.S. District Court in Florida, Molina did more than go the extra mile: The suits accuse him of illegally enriching himself at the expense of the workers he recruited.
In the civil suits, dozens of workers from Honduras say Molina charged them thousands of dollars in recruitment fees for jobs picking strawberries in Florida. Charging recruitment fees violates U.S. law, and workers involved in the lawsuits said they were instructed to say nothing of the payments during their visa interviews with U.S. consular agents.


Molina, the suits allege, promised that the workers would be paid well and that the jobs would lead to a benefit that was tantalizing but fictitious: permanent residency in the United States.


By the time workers realized the promises were hollow, they were deep in debt and scared to speak out, the suits allege. Molina and others working with him threatened to physically harm not only those who complained but also the families that the workers left behind in Honduras, according to the lawsuits.


If the allegations are true, Molina may have made more than $2 million in illegal recruitment fees. According to a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Molina is now under investigation by U.S. authorities for trafficking and forced labor. The spokeswoman declined to elaborate.


Criminal investigators, civil attorneys and Reuters have been unable to locate Molina. And despite the lawsuits and scrutiny, nothing bars Molina from continuing to work as a labor broker. Lawyers involved in the civil suit said that Molina secured visas for a group of Honduran workers as recently as November. Reuters could not corroborate the lawyers’ account.


The news agency also found that U.S. regulators do little to ensure that American employers — and the brokers that many of them use — follow through on the promises made to the workers.  


In 2011, the Department of Labor began auditing companies that use foreign workers for agricultural and other low-skill jobs. The goal: to ensure that the jobs, pay and other working conditions are as claimed. Fewer than 15 percent of petitions for foreign workers were scrutinized each year, Reuters found. And even when audits were done, many were performed months after workers had already left the jobs.

Today, such audits no longer take place; Congress cut funding for them.


FALSE PROMISES


The cases Reuters collected and reviewed illuminate how brokers operate – and how regulators fail.
Cases that were resolved in favor of workers show that brokers have forced their foreign recruits to live in decrepit conditions, such as in a condemned hotel and trailers with no heat or running water. Middlemen charged workers illicit fees and misled them about the terms of their employment, whether salary, location or even industry. Other intermediaries operated through shell companies, apparently to help hide their schemes.


The suits that have involved Molina are unresolved.
Before 2009, when Molina first surfaced in government paperwork as a broker providing foreign workers for U.S. firms, he was mentioned in a half dozen police reports, Reuters found. The reports had nothing to do with recruiting foreign labor. But the accounts in some of the reports echo the accusations of some of the Honduran workers: that Molina has made threats of physical violence.  


In one police report from May 1998, a girlfriend whom police described as having scrapes on her face and puffy eyes told authorities that Molina had beaten her. She later told police she would not testify against him because she feared he would attack her again.


 
In another police report, a Miami man was described by authorities as “in great fear” of Molina. On the day the 2001 police report was taken, authorities wrote that the man told them Molina had threatened him daily and told the man’s wife he was going to “beat her husband down to the ground then put his gun in the husband’s mouth and blow his head off.” Miami police could not say whether the matter was investigated further.


Molina’s associate at his labor broker company, All Nation Staffing, was a Florida man named Patrick Damian Burns, according to one of the lawsuits filed by the Honduran workers. Burns, Reuters found, is a felon who was sentenced to a year in prison in 1991 for intent to violate the RICO Act in connection with a bookmaking operation he helped run. The 49-year-old Burns was listed as a co-defendant in the lawsuit against Molina. Burns could not be located by the attorneys or by Reuters.

MOLINA PARTNER: Patrick Damian Burns was Molina’s associate at All Nation Staffing, a lawsuit alleges. Burns is a felon who was sentenced to a year in prison in 1991 for intent to violate the RICO Act in connection with a bookmaking operation he helped run.


How Molina and Burns entered the labor broker business is unclear.  
All Nation Staffing provided workers for at least two companies: Fancy Farms Inc and G&D Farms Inc, strawberry growers located in Florida.


Carl Grooms, owner of Fancy Farms, said he hired All Nation Staffing in 2013, the year the federal government gave Grooms approval to bring in 175 foreign workers for seasonal jobs picking strawberries.
Grooms said only that he had “learned about (Molina) on his website,” which has since been taken down.
In his promotional material, Molina offered to recruit the workers, help them secure visas, get them to the job site and even help oversee them.
“Our staff has helped many employers bring reliable, productive, documented workers,” Molina wrote in a company brochure.


G&D Farms, which received government approval in 2013 to bring in 512 foreign workers for strawberry picking, also hired All Nation Staffing, said Amber Maloney, who does marketing for the farm.
G&D had never used foreign workers before but turned to a labor broker after it found itself understaffed the previous season, Maloney said. She declined to comment on the farm’s experience with Molina and All Nation Staffing but said the farm has not used foreign workers since.


Andrew Jackson, a North Carolina attorney who files requests with the government on behalf of employers seeking temporary workers, said he spoke with Molina several years ago, when Molina was working for another Florida farm.
Each year, Jackson said, he is approached by aspiring labor brokers looking to connect with U.S. companies.
He remembered Molina as a polite man with dark hair and a colorful business card that featured a graphic of farm workers. “He must have made a good impression on those growers,” Jackson said.  


“EVERYTHING WAS A LIE”

Four of the workers Molina recruited agreed to describe their experiences to Reuters if their names were not used. The experiences they described were consistent with those contained in the lawsuits.
The workers said Molina recruited in many of the poorest, most isolated parts of Honduras, and that some of the workers couldn’t read or write.


Types of U.S. work-visa programs

H2A visas enable U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for temporary agricultural jobs for a maximum of three years, if the U.S. employer can demonstrate that American workers weren’t available. Employers often seek workers with the help of a labor broker. The visa program is overseen primarily by the U.S. Department of Labor


H2B visas enable U.S. employers to hire foreign workers for hospitality, construction and other low-skill jobs for a maximum of three years, if the U.S. employer can demonstrate American workers weren’t available. Employers often seek workers with the help of a labor broker. The visa program is overseen primarily by the U.S. Department of Labor.



H1B visas enable U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in technology and other specialty occupations on a temporary basis. The initial visa is good for up to three years, but workers can be eligible for extensions and can pursue permanent residence in the United States. Among the companies approved for large numbers of H1B workers are staffing companies that turn around and place the workers with other employers. The visa program is overseen primarily by the U.S. Department of Labor.


Certain categories of the J1 visitor exchange visa allow foreigners to work temporary positions as au pairs, camp counselors, interns, teachers, trainees, and in summer jobs, such as hotel maid. The foreign worker must use an intermediary to obtain a visa. This visa program is overseen by the U.S. Department of State.  


Molina employed a network of agents who helped spread word of job opportunities in the United States. Those who were interested were called to a series of meetings, where Molina explained what they could expect and how much each worker would need to pay. The price for a farm job was $4,000 plus travel expenses, a near fortune in Honduras, where the average per-capita annual income is $2,131, according to the United Nations.


According to the workers, Molina gave different reasons for the high fees. He told some of them that the money was a deposit in case they left the American job site; he told others that the money was a loan to keep the U.S. employer afloat. Still others were told that the money would open a path to legal residency in the United States. Many of the workers received assurances that they would be paid back at the end of their service, the workers told Reuters.


“He offered a lot of things, even that we would become residents. He offered us heaven and earth,” said one of the workers, who said he took out three loans from the bank, mortgaged some land and sold his motorcycle to raise the $4,000 to pay Molina. At the time, the worker said, he was earning $6 a day in central Honduras helping his father pick coffee. “All the promises sounded good,” he explained. “It was easy to fall for it.”


SCRIPTING THE INTERVIEW

To enter the United States, workers seeking visas need to be screened by consular officials. It’s one of the few forms of government scrutiny. But because so many visas are sought and granted, consular workers might spend no more than five minutes interviewing foreign workers before signing off.

The workers said Molina took no chances. To help them get through the interview, he taught workers to recite in unison, “WE HAVE NOT PAID ANYTHING TO GO TO THE UNITED STATES.”
Molina also warned th

em that anyone who tried to leave the job site would be deported; he said he had people in the United States who would be able to find them if they ran away, recounted one worker.


After they arrived at Fancy Farms and G&D Farms in Florida, the Honduran workers said their weekly checks amounted to $200-$300 per week — much less than what Molina had promised. And they said they could not get clear answers from Molina about when and how they would be repaid the recruitment fees.
“In the end it was just robbery,” one of the workers said.  


Molina’s operation drew scrutiny after a worker got sick and turned to Florida attorneys who advocate on behalf of temporary foreign workers.
In 2014, after the strawberry picking season ended, the attorneys helped five Honduran workers file a lawsuit in U.S. District Court.  Molina, Burns and All Nation Staffing were listed as defendants, accused of human trafficking and forced labor.



Molina’s partner, Burns, was based on the Fancy Farms property, according to owner Grooms. Molina would periodically stop by, threatening to deport or hurt anyone who complained, the workers interviewed by Reuters claimed.    
After the lawsuit was filed, Molina and Burns could not be located, and the attorneys working on behalf of the Honduran workers dropped the case. In November, they filed a second lawsuit. This time, the defendant in the case is Fancy Farms, the company that hired Molina to supply workers.
Under federal regulations, employers that bring in foreign workers must sign contracts attesting that the brokers they use do not charge workers recruitment fees. Fancy Farms did not sign such a contract, according to the lawsuit.


The employer is accused of allowing workers to be charged exorbitant fees that brought their pay below the legal wages, a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Fancy Farms has not yet filed a response in court to the civil suit. An attorney representing the company told Reuters that “there is not much more Carl Grooms and Fancy Farms can say at this time.”


Filing lawsuits in U.S. court on behalf of temporary foreign workers is challenging. Workers often return to their home countries, fear getting involved with law enforcement, or are overwhelmed by language barriers, attorneys say.


Some of the 51 plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Fancy Farms have remained in the United States and are seeking special visas for victims of human trafficking. Karla Martinez, one of the attorneys in the case, said many of workers fear that Molina will harm them if they return to Honduras, which according to the United Nations has the highest murder rate in the world.


Their fears come amid evidence that Molina may still be operating out of Honduras.
In November, a group of Honduran workers arrived in the United States expecting farm work in Georgia that never materialized. The worker and his attorney said that Molina was involved in the recruitment. Reuters could not independently confirm Molina’s involvement.
A father of three, the worker told Reuters he first heard about the job possibility from a friend who had seen an advertisement that promised what he described as enticing opportunities.


The man said he was told that for a one-time fee of $4,000, he would be assured eight to 10 months of work every year for five years. The salary would be $1,600 per week, and housing would be free.
Best of all, at the end of those five years, he would be able to bring his family to America.


“They said your children will be able to study for free paid for by the American government and this was all under a legal program that had been established by Ronald Reagan,” the worked recalled.  
To cover the $4,000 recruitment fee, and an additional $1,000 for travel, he took out a bank loan. With interest, he now owes about $8,000, he said.
When he arrived in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida last November, he said quickly realized he had been duped. He and other workers waited at the airport for hours for a bus to take them to their jobs, but no one came, he said.
“Everything was a lie. There was no job, no boss, no company. Nothing,” said the man. He is now working odd jobs in Florida, sometimes for no more than $100 a week, as he tries to figure out his legal options.
Molina’s one-time associate, Patrick Burns, may also have remained active as a labor broker.
On a Facebook page, someone who goes by that name is advertising a foreign labor broker business based in Tampa.
“If you have labor shortage on your farm and need quality help from Guatemala,” read the message re-posted by Patrick Burns, “please feel free to contact us…”  
No one at the company, called H2A Labor Force Inc, has responded to messages left by Reuters.

__________________________________________

This is the point with the JOBS ACT foreign worker laws------every global corporate campus will fill all jobs using global job brokers all tied to global labor pool----this is just starting---wait until MOVING FORWARD starts building more and more and more global factories along with those UnderArmour global campus resorts.
What's the difference between an UnderArmour resort and a Trump resort----not a thing.

Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort applies for 70 foreign worker visas during 'Made in America' weekThe 'Winter White House' claims it could find no Americans to fill non-agricultural seasonal jobs

• Mythili Sampathkumar New York
• @MythiliSk

Mar-a-Lago has applied for 70 seasonal, foreign worker visas during the White House's 'Made in America' week Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesDonald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida has applied for 70 visas for seasonal, foreign workers during what the White House billed as "Made in America" week. 
The golf club, for which memberships cost upwards of $250,000 a year, has been referred to as the "Winter White House" by the President who was spending nearly every weekend there early on in his term. 
Recently, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would expand the foreign visa worker programme to include an additional 15,000 visas on top of the quota of 66,000 for 2017. 



Trump approves 15,000 extra visas for seasonal foreign workers
The visas are meant for non-agricultural jobs in construction and the catch-all term: tourism. 
The company is seeking 35 waiters and waitresses at Mar-a-Lago along with 20 cooks and 15 maids. A listing is also posted for six cooks at the Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida.
The jobs pay anywhere from $10.33 to $20.01 per hour. They run from Oct. 1 to May 31.
Between 2013 and 2015, his Mar-a-Lago property in Florida employed 246 workers on the H-2B visa. Since 2000, Mr Trump received 1,024 H-2B visas for his businesses for waiters, kitchen, and housekeeping staff, according to a CNN report.
In the past, the US leader claimed he had to hire foreign workers for Mar-a-Lago because American workers were not available during busy tourist seasons in Florida. 

Sean Spicer responds to questions about Trump brand products being manufactured overseasThe next step, as outlined by the Department of Labor, is for Mar-a-Lago to place advertisements on two separate days for the jobs in a an effort to "conduct certain recruitment to ensure that there are not qualified US workers available for the position". 
They also have to contact former workers to re-recruit them. 
As Jeffrey Brauwerman, a former US immigration judge and currently practising in Florida, told The Independent Mar-a-Lago would then need a "certification from the Labor Department" saying the property made a concerted effort to find Americans for these jobs but could not. 
Mr Brauwerman said there are a lot of properties in Florida, "especially in the hospitality industry" that use these types of seasonal workers. People from "South Africa, Ireland, all over" come to work as servers and wait staff in restaurants. 
After all this, the property can ask the DHS - that ultimately answers to the President who also still owns the club - to issue the visas. 

Once hired, foreign workers can stay employed from four to 10 months. They are only allowed to legally stay in the US if they are employed when given this visa. 
The news comes during a week created by the White House to dedicated to American manufacturers, "the builders, to the ranchers, to the crafters, and to all those who work every day to make America great." 
Nearly every speech during his campaign promised to "bring back" US jobs to economically depressed areas of the country. He even cited how the Paris Agreement on climate change was "unfair" to American workers as a reason for pulling out of the massive global accord. 
The Secret Service has not commented as yet what having seasonal foreign workers will mean in terms of vetting and security procedures should the President travel to Mar-a-Lago during their employment periods.