The Progressive argument:

Nationalize the Federal Reserve
Brandon Turbeville The Progressive Gazette
December 4, 2013

The United States today finds itself in the midst of a crisis which exists on a multitude of different levels. From the establishment of a culture of constant warfare, increasing environmental degradation, and the devolution into an outright police state, the perils of the current system are easily visible to those with eyes to see.

Nowhere, however, is the crisis more visible than in the manifestations of the world economic depression.

From mass unemployment (estimated at approximately 25% when all factors are considered) and a growing national debt to a ballooning trade deficit and the loss of purchasing power of the dollar as well as decrepit and crumbling national infrastructure, the United States today faces a crisis of epic proportions.

Most of the blame for this economic calamity, of course, can be directly traced back to the treachery of private bankers, Wall Street, and the practice of usury combined the acts of the agents of these financiers in the halls of government at some point or other. Ever since the Federal Reserve was solidified as the perceived national bank of the United States, the most powerful nation on the face of the earth and, thus, its people, were placed under the rule and at the mercy of private bankers...
MORE: http://www.progressivegazette.com/2013/12/nationalize-federal-reserve.html

That is unnecessarily ambiguous. Do they mean lobbyists or our bankster enabling elected officials?

Here's the thing, guys and gals. Those of us who don't own gobs of stock and aren't officers of the culprits can't do squat about the misdeed of banksters, Wall Street and their lobbyists. Only our elected representatives are the only ones who can do anything about them. However, they've enabled them.

Our elected representatives, the ones we pay for every year, are the only ones about whom we can do a thing. So, that is where your ire is most productively directed. Don't keep railing at banksters and Wall Street, but electing corporatists, and wondering why things like this keep happening.

The story of how this works begins in 27 industrial warehouses in the Detroit area where a Goldman subsidiary stores customers’ aluminum. Each day, a fleet of trucks shuffles 1,500-pound bars of the metal among the warehouses. Two or three times a day, sometimes more, the drivers make the same circuits. They load in one warehouse. They unload in another. And then they do it again.

This industrial dance has been choreographed by Goldman to exploit pricing regulations set up by an overseas commodities exchange, an investigation by The New York Times has found. The back-and-forth lengthens the storage time. And that adds many millions a year to the coffers of Goldman, which owns the warehouses and charges rent to store the metal. It also increases prices paid by manufacturers and consumers across the country.

Tyler Clay, a forklift driver who worked at the Goldman warehouses until early this year, called the process “a merry-go-round of metal.”

Only a tenth of a cent or so of an aluminum can’s purchase price can be traced back to the strategy. But multiply that amount by the 90 billion aluminum cans consumed in the United States each year — and add the tons of aluminum used in things like cars, electronics and house siding — and the efforts by Goldman and other financial players has cost American consumers more than $5 billion over the last three years, say former industry executives, analysts and consultants.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

Good thing this report is coming out now, before the Republicans take over the Senate.


Who could have figured this out?

They might have gotten away with this entirely. However, thanks to this no doubt expensive investigation, they've been "rapped on the knuckles." Justice has been served (and, in an entirely different sense of the word, so has the American taxpayer).

Well, it's all good anyway, as long as we have a plan to keep this from happening again.


"It’s time to restore the separation between banking and commerce and to prevent Wall Street from using nonpublic information to profit at the expense of industry and consumers,” said retiring Sen. Carl Levin, who runs the committee.

Said a Democratic Senator who has been the majority for the past 8 years, just as he is about to retire and just as Republicans are about to take over the Senate. And, by any chance, did these news come out on Friday afternoon?

If you still don't believe in D.C. kabuki, I can get you a fantastic deal on the Charlestown Bridge. It's beautiful, historically referential and located in one of the most expensive parts of Boston.

As usual!