An Epochal Land Grab

The Federal Reserve just purchased  $1.24 Trillion on mortgage bonds.    That means.   The Fed has just swept $1.25 Trillion OF LAND ownership into their pocket.

That central banks create money from nothing is confusing to the public, but there is not enough gold for a world with over 6 billion folks, and money gets its value from work, not rocks.  But banks claiming land out of the confusion they themselves created  is over the top.

PT Barnum said there was one born every moment.   I have been paying attention for a long time and it was only after my 60th year that I understood that the Fed was as Federal as Federal Express.  I am not being cute here, I wrote a thesis on the monetary system in 1978.  Economics does not teach about the creation of money.  Even some bank managers do not understand this.  Who holds the Bag at the Fed… are the member banks, called the ‘money center banks’, not the US government.*

Here is my alarm point:  The private creators of money have just swept 1.25 trillion of our land into that bag by “purchasing” mortgage bonds.   I understand how it is (necessarily) mystifying that money is created from nothing.  This is only understood in rarified central bank circles. The money supply must vary with the volume of commercial activity. But claiming land out of nothing is another issue entirely.  That is claiming income streams that produce in perpetuity into private hands at the stoke of a pen.  I am OK with the Treasury owning land that has gone into limbo because of banking missteps in the old walnut shell trick.   This represents some semblance of the commons.   And it would lighten our tax load.  The banks are not a commons, they are private, and by the way, caused the crash of 2008.   It came to pass because of bad gambles with derivatives by money center banks and AIG.  (when the subprime market was $1.3Trillion which got all the press, because people could understand it , whereas the bank and hedge fund derivative trades were $60Trillion, got little ink outside the business press because they were hard to describe.)

The result of the transfer of $1.25 Trillion of mortgage paper to the Fed is a World Class land grab.

This is a violation of the commons, of house holders, of the American people in my opinion.

*Understanding Central Banking is a head scratch.   It was a bone of contention between Jefferson and Hamilton and Jackson to boot.   It’s previous incarnation was with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and created a central banking function ( a lender of last resort) but left the ownership of that power in private hands.   What is now going on in August of 2010 is seat of the pants and brand new territory.    My recommendation on understanding this is by reading the book: Web of  Debt by Ellen Hodgson Brown.  It is clearly written, and an amazingly well told story.     If only the younger generation can get ahold of the old walnut shell trick before I did.

Inspired by the Land

It is summertime now, and most folks are on vacation. What does vacation mean? Without Work. A foregoing of commercial intention. A release from intention to engage in the discovery of the I AM that lives in this human being. And most folks in the Northwest go out into the woods, into the mountains.

What we get, if we actually get away…. from media, city rhythms, from other’s sounds, from our inner hum-drum…. is genuine inspiration. Ancient trees, moss covered fortresses that have withstood centuries of rain and wind. and that wind, which I never understood till this year, is very orderly. Yes, it makes us confused, it disturbs us with the dust it raises, but it is not confused. It is the gentle mover. It moves the dapples in the canopy of trees that shade the earth from the scorching sun. That sun that we will seek for warmth as the dry autumn falls upon us as leaves fall upon the ground, now in summer that sun burns what it touches. The earth, it misses its ancient canopy.

It is amazing to me that so few realize the profundity of the gift that old trees give. A lofty canopy of rich cool shade, with tall stems reaching deep into spongy soil netted with roots and mycorrhizal rhizomes, or as the Indians used to say: grandfathers shaking hands, beneath the ground. Big trees not only provide shade, and in their death – topsoil, oh, and the air we breath, the culture of their roots provides the nursery for soil creation, home to the flowers of rot: mushrooms.

My patriotism is nourished by the land, the respect for the land that the original people here had and still have. They are sometimes called Indians, sometimes called Native Americans, but in practice here, in the Pacific Northwest, They call themselves by the name of the river near which they were born. The Yakima, the Warm Springs, the Cowlitz, the Stillaguamish, the Tulalips all members of the Salish, or Salmon Eaters. Try googling
Salish.

So inventive we Americans. Coming back from the woods, refreshed, inspired. I wonder how many city dwellers now across the land, create the chance, to be so inspired.

Which is worse, bulldozing a graveyard, or building a cultural center?

News or Absurdity; quick, which is it?

Item One: Authorities in Jerusalem bulldozed an Arabic graveyard to make way for a Museum of Tolerance.

Item Two: There is national consternation in the USA that a New York City muslim group wants to build a mosque and cultural center two blocks from ground zero, which some are calling sacred ground.

Item Three: Six hundred retired NFL football players are suing a video game outfit because their football game players resemble them.

Item Four: Nick Merrill, and New York city ISP operator finally broke his silence after being “gagged” by an FBI gag order since 2005. In 2005 he was served with a “National Security Letter” which required him to provide FBI agents with the searches and data on his subscribers, yet with no warrant from a judge provided. What is wrong with that? you say.

It is a violation of the first, fourth and fifth amendments of the Bill of Rights, I say.

The constitution and the Bill of Right is on this site. Can you state, not with names but in simple constitutional language what rights of Nick Merrill were violated? (This is described as the practice of citizenship; and practice makes pretty good.)

I have not been able to comment on the above absurdity…… which is actual news, for the last two days. I cannot find a clown suit loud enough, or a mouth pucker round enough. Please comment and help me out of my dumbfound.

______David

A subtext to this entire site is that for a constitutional country whose document begins with We the People, the People (you) must know the law. It is my lament that The King was replaced by The People, and the People have deferred to the Lawyers. You can state your rights to anyone: lawyer, policeman or judge, and that person must obey. The constitution has replaced the king with You, citizen. The President presides over the Congress (which means ‘to walk upright together’) He presides, he is not king. He took an Oath to preserve and protect the constitution. Only if he forsakes his oath and congress does not obey the ‘king clause’ (Article I, section 8, clause 11) is he then king. I ask: where are we, relative to the king, when the president has assassination powers anywhere on the globe with drones, jackals, and a black budget?

We now have a President who is also a Constitutional scholar. Can we as a People hold him to his scholarship?

As the US acts as a crazy sick-person. Now What?

If the United States were to be a person… who would it be?

My guess is a sick crazy-person.

Crazy, because our societal nerves do not work. The Press:

the Newspapers, who do the deep reporting, are dying because opinions are free on the internet, and folks don’t seem to miss the absence of fact in our public discourse. And people will not pay for what is already free.

The press is the equivalent to a person’s nervous system. How one knows oneself.

And what sickness would the society of the United States, if it were a person, have?

Well, we act anemic, blind, schizophrenic, depressed and way out of joint. Our nerves are shot and we are addicted to some drug called blackberry, iphone, ipod, texting, tweeting, sports or TV.

What does that mean?

anemic because there is no blood surging in our veins ( call it income)

blind: because we have no vision.

schizophrenic: because half of us believe the other half is nuts and absolutely devoid of common sense.

depressed: not only because we have no vision, but the pres. and the press are telling us everything is swell when we know it is not.

out of joint: because the left hand cannot coordinate with the right. Is global warming real or not? Is it stimulus or deficit reduction? We fight two wars which are absolutely important on the other side of the globe while the war near our border in Mexico is not.

So the question is…. how do you treat a sick crazy-person?

I would say that you treat the crazy part first, or he will not accept treatment. What is that? To fix the press.

What is wrong with the press? It’s funding model has been broken and does not work. Why? It used to be funded by the display advertising model, and Google outdated that with its intentional marketing model. It works better to sell stuff. No problem there. The problem is that no funding has emerged to replace the missing display model funds, and there is no money to pay reporters to investigate unknown stories and dredge up new facts. Thus all we have today is the pander press, as old stories and trivia recirculate.

What would fix this? Simple. A free people must liberate themselves from a pun. Instead of considering the “free press” in the gratis column, the same as “free beer”, the people would hold to the same standard as colonists held themselves during Ben Franklin’s time and realize that a free press meant liberty (not gratis) and must be funded by a free people to the tune of $30 a month (That is the current value of the $1.50 a month the colonists paid.)

So simple. One half of a family’s internet bill to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) would go to pay for content…. $30/month. And recipients of pay for content would reintroduce the fairness doctrine, that requires an airing opposing views, so that we give up our current pathology of talking past one another and believing with conviction that the other half of America is dumb as a stump. Democracy will not work in the context of a mutual castigation society.

It is said the majority of Americans today believe we should receive better services and yet, are unwilling to pay for them. In our current formulation, there is no cost for being incoherent. None.

The Republicans want to fund two wars, extend the Bush tax cuts, and yet are not willing to extend unemployment insurance when roughly 20% of Americans are out of work. People must wait until the ripe old age of 18 before they vote, seeming because we do not let children make decisions of state. Yet when adults act as infants, and produce entirely incoherent positions, what are we to do?

And this is not to exonerate the Democrats who are equally incoherent in their positions, for example they too support a war in Afghanistan, apparently to give voting rights there for women in a population that is 80% illiterate and who live in a forth century goat herding culture in profoundly mountainous terrain, when we are firing teachers in our home states because we cannot afford to pay them.

But all this refers back to the press not functioning, because it is not reliably funded, and thus is pandering for eyeballs and wishes not to offend.

The truth shall set us free. Are we each, willing to pay for it?

I contend it must become the ethic of a free people to fund a free press.

That’s what I think. Do you have a better idea?

As the US acts as a crazy sick-person. Now What?

If the United States were to be a person… who would it be?

My guess is a sick crazy-person.

Crazy, because our societal nerves do not work. The Press:
the Newspapers, who do the deep reporting, are dying because opinions are free on the internet, and folks don’t seem to miss the absence of fact in our public discourse. And people will not pay for what is already free.

The press is the equivalent to a person’s nervous system. How one knows oneself.
And what sickness would the society of the United States, if it were a person, have?

Well, we act anemic, blind, schizophrenic, depressed and way out of joint. Our nerves are shot and we are addicted to some drug called blackberry, iphone, ipod, texting, tweeting, sports or TV.

What does that mean?
anemic because there is no blood surging in our veins ( call it income)

blind: because we have no vision.

schizophrenic: because half of us believe the other half is nuts and absolutely devoid of common sense.

depressed: not only because we have no vision, but the pres. and the press are telling us everything is swell when we know it is not.

out of joint: because the left hand cannot coordinate with the right. Is global warming real or not? Is it stimulus or deficit reduction? We fight two wars which are absolutely important on the other side of the globe while the war near our border in Mexico is not.

So the question is…. how do you treat a sick crazy-person?

I would say that you treat the crazy part first, or he will not accept treatment. What is that? To fix the press.

What is wrong with the press? It’s funding model has been broken and does not work. Why? It used to be funded by the display advertising model, and Google outdated that with its intentional marketing model. It works better to sell stuff. No problem there. The problem is that no funding has emerged to replace the missing display model funds, and there is no money to pay reporters to investigate unknown stories and dredge up new facts. Thus all we have today is the pander press, as old stories and trivia recirculate.

What would fix this? Simple. A free people must liberate themselves from a pun. Instead of considering the “free press” in the gratis column, the same as “free beer”, the people would hold to the same standard as colonists held themselves during Ben Franklin’s time and realize that a free press meant liberty (not gratis) and must be funded by a free people to the tune of $30 a month (That is the current value of the $1.50 a month the colonists paid.)

So simple. One half of a family’s internet bill to the Internet Service Provider (ISP) would go to pay for content…. $30/month. And recipients of pay for content would reintroduce the fairness doctrine, that requires an airing opposing views, so that we give up our current pathology of talking past one another and believing with conviction that the other half of America is dumb as a stump. Democracy will not work in the context of a mutual castigation society.

It is said the majority of Americans today believe we should receive better services and yet, are unwilling to pay for them. In our current formulation, there is no cost for being incoherent. None.

The Republicans want to fund two wars, extend the Bush tax cuts, and yet are not willing to extend unemployment insurance when roughly 20% of Americans are out of work. People must wait until the ripe old age of 18 before they vote, seeming because we do not let children make decisions of state. Yet when adults act as infants, and produce entirely incoherent positions, what are we to do?

And this is not to exonerate the Democrats who are equally incoherent in their positions, for example they too support a war in Afghanistan, apparently to give voting rights there for women in a population that is 80% illiterate and who live in a forth century goat herding culture in profoundly mountainous terrain, when we are firing teachers in our home states because we cannot afford to pay them.

But all this refers back to the press not functioning, because it is not reliably funded, and thus is pandering for eyeballs and wishes not to offend.

The truth shall set us free. Are we each, willing to pay for it?
I contend it must become the ethic of a free people to fund a free press.

That’s what I think. Do you have a better idea?