Did you know that the Fed only increased interest rates, once, during Obama's entire 8 years in office, but has increased interest rates eight times, since Trump was elected only two years ago?

"It's The most blatant scam of all history: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. ~ G. Edward Griffin

ZeroHedge

Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog

Donald Trump just made one of the most brilliant moves of his entire presidency.  By accusing the Federal Reserve of “going loco”, he is placing the blame for the coming stock market crash and horrifying economic downturn squarely where it belongs, and he is firing up millions of true conservatives among his base at the same time. 

For many, many years, a lot of us have been trying to educate the American people about the deeply insidious Federal Reserve system.  As Ron Paul once so astutely observed, it is actually about as “federal” as Federal Express is.  The Federal Reserve is an unelected cabal of central bankers that is running our economy into the ground, and the only way we are going to fix our long-term economic and financial problems is if we abolish it. 

So for those of us that understand these things, it is extremely exciting to hear President Trump use language such as this…

President Donald Trump knocked the Federal Reserve for continuing to raise interest rates despite some recent market turbulence.

“I think the Fed is making a mistake. They are so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy,” the president said after walking off Air Force One in Erie, Pennsylvania for a rally.

That may be one of the greatest things that Donald Trump has ever said.

And if Trump feels like his base is really responding to this sort of rhetoric, he may start using it as a campaign tactic.

Could you imagine thousands upon thousands of supporters chanting “End the Fed” at Trump rallies leading up to the 2020 election?

That would definitely be a beautiful thing.

Without a doubt, the Federal Reserve has created “the everything bubble”, and when it bursts the economic pain is going to be off the charts.

Of course, the left is going to want to blame Trump, and so Trump is being very smart by pointing a finger at the Fed for aggressively raising rates at a time when the U.S. economy is already slowing down.

And you know what?  CNBC’s Jim Cramer actually agrees with Trump…

“I agree with President Trump that the Fed needs to tighten less aggressively, even as he probably shouldn’t have said those nasty things in public because he’s making it harder, not easier, for Jerome Powell to give him what he wants,” he said. “When you look at the economy empirically right now, you start to see real problems.”

Following those comments, Cramer offered some examples of the “real problems” that he is seeing throughout our economy…

Sources within the auto industry, in addition to major suppliers PPG Industries and Trinseo, have suggested to the “Mad Money” host that there is a “definitive slowdown” in auto sales.

“Housing is either pausing or down for the count,” he said. “We know this because it’s what Lennar, the largest homebuilder in America, told us. Lennar has its pulse on every market.”

Key economic building blocks — things like packing materials and plastic — are either stagnant or dropping in price, indicating a slowdown in shipping, a leading barometer for the state of the economy, Cramer said.

Needless to say, criticizing the Federal Reserve is a very dangerous thing to do, and there is a reason why previous presidents have never dared to do so.

But that is one of the great things about Trump.  He simply refuses to be controlled, and he will not be intimidated by threats.

We desperately need a president that is willing to stand up to the elite and call for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.  For a long time it appeared that doing something about the Fed was not on Trump’s radar, but now that may be changing.

So let us hope that Trump’s war with the Federal Reserve escalates significantly because we want this to be a top national issue during the 2020 presidential election.

The following is a list of 101 reasons why the Federal Reserve should be shut down that is an updated version of an earlier list from one of my previous articles…

#1 We like to think that we have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people”, but the truth is that an unelected, unaccountable group of central planners has far more power over our economy than anyone else in our society does.

#2 The Federal Reserve is actually “independent” of the government. In fact, the Federal Reserve has argued vehemently in federal court that it is “not an agency”of the federal government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

#3 The Federal Reserve openly admits that the 12 regional Federal Reserve banks are organized “much like private corporations“.

#4 The regional Federal Reserve banks issue shares of stock to the “member banks” that own them.

#5 100% of the shareholders of the Federal Reserve are private banks. The U.S. government owns zero shares.

#6 The Federal Reserve is not an agency of the federal government, but it has been given the power to regulate our banks and financial institutions. This should not be happening.

#7 According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress is the one that is supposed to have the authority to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. So why is the Federal Reserve doing it?

#8 If you look at a “U.S. dollar”, it actually says “Federal Reserve note” at the top. In the financial world, a “note” is an instrument of debt.

#9 In 1963, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 11110 which authorized the U.S. Treasury to issue “United States notes” which were created by the U.S. government directly and not by the Federal Reserve. He was assassinated shortly thereafter.

#10 Many of the debt-free United States notes issued under President Kennedy are still in circulation today.

#11 The Federal Reserve determines what levels some of the most important interest rates in our system are going to be set at. In a free market system, the free market would determine those interest rates.

#12 The Federal Reserve has become so powerful that it is now known as “the fourth branch of government“.

#13 The greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history was when there was no central bank.

#14 The Federal Reserve was designed to be a perpetual debt machine. The bankers that designed it intended to trap the U.S. government in a perpetual debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape. Since the Federal Reserve was established 100 years ago, the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger.

#15 A permanent federal income tax was established the exact same year that the Federal Reserve was created. This was not a coincidence. In order to pay for all of the government debt that the Federal Reserve would create, a federal income tax was necessary. The whole idea was to transfer wealth from our pockets to the federal government and from the federal government to the bankers.

#16 The period prior to 1913 (when there was no income tax) was the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history.

#17 Today, the U.S. tax code is about 13 miles long.

#18 From the time that the Federal Reserve was created until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 98 percent of its value.

#19 From the time that President Nixon took us off the gold standard until now, the U.S. dollar has lost 83 percent of its value.

#20 During the 100 years before the Federal Reserve was created, the U.S. economy rarely had any problems with inflation. But since the Federal Reserve was established, the U.S. economy has experienced constant and never ending inflation.

#21 In the century before the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation was about half a percent. In the century since the Federal Reserve was created, the average annual rate of inflation has been about 3.5 percent.

#22 The Federal Reserve has stripped the middle class of trillions of dollars of wealth through the hidden tax of inflation.

#23 The size of M1 has nearly doubled since 2008 thanks to the reckless money printing that the Federal Reserve has been doing.

#24 The Federal Reserve has been starting to behave like the Weimar Republic, and we all remember how that ended.

#25 The Federal Reserve has been consistently lying to us about the level of inflation in our economy. If the inflation rate was still calculated in the same way that it was back when Jimmy Carter was president, the official rate of inflation would be somewhere about 10 percent today.

#26 Since the Federal Reserve was created, there have been 18 distinct recessions or depressions: 1918, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1929, 1937, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 1960, 1969, 1973, 1980, 1981, 1990, 2001, 2008.

#27 Within 20 years of the creation of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. economy was plunged into the Great Depression.

#28 The Federal Reserve created the conditions that caused the stock market crash of 1929, and even Ben Bernanke admits that the response by the Fed to that crisis made the Great Depression even worse than it should have been.

#29 The “easy money” policies of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan set the stage for the great financial crisis of 2008.

#30 Without the Federal Reserve, the “subprime mortgage meltdown” would probably never have happened.

#31 If you can believe it, there have been 10 different economic recessions since 1950. The Federal Reserve created the “dotcom bubble”, the Federal Reserve created the “housing bubble” and now it has created “the everything bubble” which threatens to plunge us into the worst economic downturn in world history once it bursts.

#32 According to an official government report, the Federal Reserve made 16.1 trillion dollars in secret loans to the big banks during the last financial crisis. The following is a list of loan recipients that was taken directly from page 131 of the report…

Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch – $1.949 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC – $868 billion
Bear Sterns – $853 billion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland – $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion
Deutsche Bank – $354 billion
UBS – $287 billion
Credit Suisse – $262 billion
Lehman Brothers – $183 billion
Bank of Scotland – $181 billion
BNP Paribas – $175 billion
Wells Fargo – $159 billion
Dexia – $159 billion
Wachovia – $142 billion
Dresdner Bank – $135 billion
Societe Generale – $124 billion
“All Other Borrowers” – $2.639 trillion

Continue Reading

ZeroHedge

by Tyler Durden

The FBI has refused to declassify 37 pages of materials related to the Uranium One deal, citing national security and the privacy issues, reports The Hill's, John Solomon. The documents are thought to contain information regarding then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's involvement, as well as the Obama administration's knowledge of the controversial deal. 

The existence of the documents became known after a recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) release of related material contained an entry entitled "Uranium One Transaction." The publicly available portion includes benign material, such as public letters from members of Congress who demanded information on the Uranium One approval. 

Perhaps the FBI’s unexpected “release” — and I use that word loosely, since they gave up no public information of importance — in the FOIA vault was a warning flare designed to remind America there might be evidence worth looking at.

One former U.S. official, who had access to the evidence shared with CFIUS during the Uranium One deal, said this to me: “There is definitely material that would be illuminating to the issues that have been raised. Somebody should fight to make it public.”

That somebody could be President Trump, who could add these 37 pages of now-secret documents to his declassification order he is considering in the Russia case. -The Hill

William Campbell and the FBI 

In October of 2017, John Solomon and Alison Spann broke the story of former CIA and FBI undercover agent, William D Campbell - who remained unnamed until this year. Campbell was deeply embedded in the Russian nuclear industry while Robert Mueller was the Director of the FBI - which paid him a $51,000 "thank you" award for his service.

“For several years my relationship with the CIA consisted of being debriefed after foreign travel,” Campbell noted in his testimony, which was obtained by this reporter. “Gradually, the relationship evolved into the CIA tasking me to travel to specific countries to obtain specific information. In the 1990’s I developed a working relationship with Kazakhstan and Russia in their nuclear energy industries. When I told the CIA of this development, I was turned over to FBI counterintelligence agents.” -saracarter.com 

While undercover, Campbell was forced by the Russians (with the FBI's blessing) to launder large sums of money - which allowed the FBI to uncover a massive Russian "nuclear money-laundering apparatus." Campbell claims to have collected over 5,000 documents along with video evidence of money being stuffed into suitcases, Russians bragging about bribing the West, and millions of dollars routed to the Clinton Foundation. 

The evidence was compiled as Secretary Clinton courted Russia for better relations, as her husband former President Clinton collected a $500,000 speech payday in Moscow, and as the Obama administration approved the sale of a U.S. mining company, Uranium One, to Rosatom. -The Hill

Campbell initially discovered that Moscow had compromised a Maryland-based uranium trucking firm, Transport Logistics International (TLI) in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – which bribed a Russian nuclear official in exchange for a contract transport Russian-mined U.S. uranium, including "yellowcake" uranium secured in the Uranium One deal.

He delivered bribes from TLI in $50,000 increments to Russian nuclear official Vadim Mikerin of Tenex. Under orders from the FBI in order to maintain his cover, Campbell fronted hundreds of thousands of dollars he says he was never reimbursed for. As a result of Campbell's work, TLI co-president Mark Lambert was charged in an 11-count indictment in connection with the scheme, while Vadim Mikerin, who resides in Maryland, was prosecuted in 2015 and handed a four-year sentence.

Second, Campbell says that Russian nuclear officials revealed a scheme to route millions of dollars to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) through lobbying firm ARPCO, which was expected to funnel a portion of its annual $3 million lobbying fee to the charity. 

“The contract called for four payments of $750,000 over twelve months. APCO was expected to give assistance free of charge to the Clinton Global Initiative as part of their effort to create a favorable environment to ensure the Obama administration made affirmative decisions on everything from Uranium One to the U.S.-Russia Civilian Nuclear Cooperation agreement.“ -William Campbell

Campbell told Congressional investigators that the Uranium One deal along with billions in other uranium contracts inside the United States during the Obama administration was part of a "Russian uranium dominance strategy" involving Tenex and its American arm Tenem - both subsidiaries of state-owned Russian energy company Rosatom. 

“The emails and documents I intercepted during 2010 made clear that Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One – for both its Kazakh and American assets – was part of Russia’s geopolitical strategy to gain leverage in global energy markets,” he testified.  “I obtained documentary proof that Tenex was helping Rosatom win CFIUS approval, including an October 6, 2010 email …  asking me specifically to help overcome opposition to the Uranium One deal.” 

“Rosatom/Tenex threw a party to celebrate, which was widely attended by American nuclear industry officials. At the request of the FBI, I attended and recorded video footage of Tenma's new offices,” he added.

Officials with APCO - the lobbying firm accused of funneling the money to the Clinton Global Initiative, told The Hill that its support for CGI and its work for Russia were not connected in any way, and involved different divisions of the firm. 

What did Obama know?

As Solomon notes, a giant question remains that may be solved by the release of the 37-pages of classified information; what did the Obama administration know about this? 

Did the FBI notify then-President Obama, Hillary Clinton and other leaders on the CFIUS board about Rosatom’s dark deeds before the Uranium One sale was approved, or did the bureau drop the ball and fail to alert policymakers?

Neither outcome is particularly comforting. Either the United States, eyes wide open, approved giving uranium assets to a corrupt Russia, or the FBI failed to give the evidence of criminality to the policymakers before such a momentous decision. -The Hill

Campbell says that his FBI handlers assured him that Obama had been briefed by then-FBI Director Mueller on Rosatom's criminal activities as part of the president's daily briefing, however, "politics" was the reason that the sale was approved anyway. 

Continue Reading:  Smearing Campbell

CRN Politics

By Barry Secrest

The headline read: "800,000 people are about to flee New York and California because of taxes, say economists."

The title adroitly but indirectly explains exactly what Trump has been doing in order to smooth out the competitive playing field domestically while cracking down on mercantile Maoism in authoritarian nations like China.

Free trade in China, only flows in one direction--and that's outward---making it not only severely un-free but also uber-dumb-trade for us, but, Trump is about to change all that.

President Trump also knew that frugalizing taxes would catch the US economy on fire while simultaneously etching a pathway, via the tax code, towards outing states participating in soft-socialism.

Remember how states like New York, traditionally a big tax-promoting socialist haven, suddenly began howling in protest when the uber-wealthy could no longer write-off their property taxes from their federal forms completely?

But, we thought your huddled masses were all about even more Massive taxation, New York! What happened?

Trump's plan is working--depopulating states that huddle in mass with the so-called elites--via their massive revenue-streaming machines will automatically result in those states losing their religion rather rapidly while simultaneously bolstering states operating within traditional American principles.

Trump's brilliant maneuver, in this regard, approximates one of the best ways to splendidly dilute the elitist superhavens of Leftism, which is also why those shrieking sounds we're hearing is reaching a fever-pitch.

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The Transformation of America

In fact, severe draconian regulation is one of several major steps towards the Marxist transformation Obama and his globalist minions were seeking. Moreover, the dirty little secret that no one talks about is the fact that much of this regulation was brought about, not by leftist politicians, but rather by the same massive international companies who now control most of our media and many of our politicians.

These Big Corp companies and their agenda has been not so much about Marxism but rather about stifling and forcing out upstart but smaller competitors. 

A Globalist Manifesto: The Advent of A Completely Radicalized One-World Democrat Party

This is how they stay on top and it's also how they try to keep the small business competition down while using naive Leftist politicians and greedy Rino's to further their self-serving goals.

This is also one of the reasons that those big globalist corporations despise Trump, who has ejected more regulations from the books than another president in US history.

Big Corporations are, in fact, a major source for hiring vast armies of lobbyists in order to buy politicians off. This, in fact,  also represents, in a major way, one of the golden bridges of globalism that ties big international companies like the Koch Brothers in with big Leftist companies like Google.

This grand tie-in represents, at least in part, the strange bedfellows we often see and try to understand but can never quite wrap our minds around. Like skilled mesmerists, these companies often use the figurative equivalent of an attractive magician's assistant to deflect our attention away from what's really happening, while watching the pretty thing at center stage.

A Classic Case of Misdirection...

For instance, the Koch brothers have forever hidden behind the US flag as a form of camouflaged protection, while adhering behind the scenes to figurative globalist precepts like global warming (regulation/control/carbon fees), open borders (globalized cheap wages), and the mass influx of illegal aliens(more big-regulation ' left-wing voters /  cheap wages)

This was also one of the several measures undertaken by Obama in what he described as his "transformation of America."

However, Obama was stopped almost cold by a new American revolution.

Obama's recently been out trying to claim Trump's outrageous economic success while also trying to convince a now fully employed America of what a terrible job Trump is doing.

It's fun to watch the cognitive dissonance from the left, dancing eerily in front of us whenever the left tries to explain how a now super-charged US economy, somehow, was built by  Mr. Barack  "You-Didn't-Build-That" Obama.

To wit, probably one the biggest reasons that Obama's America didn't decline into a semi-Cloward-Piven collapse was the patriotic US political takeover by the traditional American-inspired Tea Party movement of 2010, 2012, and 2014, (and you can thank us later for that, Lefties.)

Point-in-fact, we’ve noted repeatedly over the last decade–that the hidden hands behind all of the climate change sensationalism’s true goal is, in fact, one of a centralized world government and totalitarian Socialism financial system worldwide.

A former treasurer of a major world organization even admitted to the fact that global economic changes were the actual goal being sought–so, it’s not surprising that when the searing heat of late Summer arrives, all of the indoctrinated academics start clucking that the sky is literally falling.

The climate hasn’t changed, nor has the true science, however, the cult of individuals trying to gain authority over it, along with pretty much everything else, have.

It’s the Hegelian Dialectic on full display…

 ~ Refocus Notes

The Daily Caller

By Michael Bastasch | Contributor

While scientists and environmentalists debate when global warming may turn Earth into a “hothouse,” conservatives and other experts were skeptical of renewed warnings of a “tipping point.”

Why? Because scientists warning of “hothouse Earth” veered from presenting a scientific case (a dubious one) for alarmism into political activism.

The “hothouse Earth” paper that’s made waves in the media calls for a “deep transformation based on a fundamental reorientation of human values, equity, behavior, institutions, economies, and technologies.” Many conservatives took that to mean global government and socialism.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance co-founder Michael Liebreich, who’s not a skeptic of man-made warming, called the paper “a crock,” adding “as a conservative I can’t be bothered to read it.”

 (RELATED: Scientists Issue ‘Absurd’ Doomsday Prediction, Warn Of ‘Hothouse Earth’)

 When challenged, Liebrich doubled down, quoting directly from the paper that called for “collective human action” on global warming.

The paper Liebrich is referring to was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A group of scientists warned of a global warming tipping point at 2 degrees Celsius — the goal of the Paris agreement.

The authors call for “fundamental societal changes” to human society while generating alarming media headlines.

Even liberal environmental writer Eric Holthaus tweeted the “hothouse” paper had “some @DemSocialists shit,” referring to the Democratic Socialist of America political party.

The Global Warming Policy Forum, the political arm of a U.K.-based think tank co-founded by former conservative Member of Parliament Nigel Lawson, blasted the “socialist agenda of climate alarmism.”

Conservatives weren’t the only ones calling out the “hothouse” paper’s political tinge. Alex Trembath of the ecomodernist Breakthrough Institute noted his skepticism of the paper.

University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke, Jr. noted the lead authors of the “hothouse Earth” paper put out a similar essay in 2013, calling for an “institution (or institutions) operating, with authority, above the level of individual countries to ensure that the planetary boundaries are respected.”

Click Here to View Tweets and additional documentation

It's always been a series of overlapping issues for the Kochs and their waning globalist political establishment machine, as they hide behind the flag whenever its monetarily feasible and secretly stomp it whenever it's not.

These are the same control freaks who actually blocked Trump from their massive GOP database and flirted publically with the idea of voting for Hillary when Trump came on the scene...they are the ones who pull Paul Ryan, and many others' reins...

Eyes Wide Shut: Stunning Koch Brothers GOP Nod To Hillary Clinton Exposes Ruling Class Deceptions

~ Refocus Notes

Christopher Bedford | Editor in Chief

The Daily Caller News Foundation

Colorado Springs, Colo. — Anger and disappointment with the Republican Party is palpable at Colorado Springs’ historic Broadmoor Hotel, where Charles Koch is hosting over 500 donors for the largest-yet summer meeting of his Seminar Network.

“People are taking us for granted,” Charles Koch Foundation President Brian Hooks told a room of high-dollar attendees. “This network has got to lead.”

Citing tariffs on trade, immigration policy, and a $1.3 trillion budget, Hooks listed libertarian disappointments with the Republican Congress and Trump administration.

“Many of you watched in disgust,” Hooks said, as a record-breaking budget was passed “by a Republican government … We supported some of these guys!”

In May, the Koch-run Americans for Prosperity (AFP) activist group targeted Republican Rep. Lou Barletta, a close Trump ally who is running for Senate in Pennsylvania and voted for the spending bill. He was among 10 Republicans and seven Democrats targeted by AFP radio, television and internet ads for their vote on the budget.

In June, AFP ran ads thanking Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp for co-sponsoring legislation to roll back Dodd-Frank regulations championed by the left. Heitkamp, who voted for the $1.3 trillion budget deal and against tax reform, is in a very close race against a Republican challenger in a state Trump won by more than 36 points.

“The fact that we’re willing to do this during an election shows we’re dead serious,” AFP CEO Emily Seidel told attendees. “This network will no longer follow anyone’s lead or be taken for granted.”

While the libertarian network has a long history of working in non-partisan areas, including education, criminal recidivism and poverty, it is made up of largely center-right, conservative and Republican donors.

“I know this is uncomfortable,” Seidel told attendees.

The move represents a return to emphasising Charles Koch’s libertarian beliefs and a retreat from the partisan politics his network had emphasized since the tea party in 2010 and later Gov. Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run.

In 2015, Charles Koch and his brother, David, announced a planned $889 million in campaign spending– a figure that would put their network on par with the Republican and Democratic parties. As now-President Donald Trump rose in polls, however, these plans were scuttled.

Center-right politicians and operatives who’d expected the spending to go through, including a number of Koch network alumni, were left disappointed in the shift in focus from the GOP after years of efforts, with some believing the network should have spent against Trump and others believing they should have spent more on Republican election fights. In the lead up to the conference, James Davis, who heads the Koch network’s communications arm, In Pursuit Of, emailed reporters Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek’s essay “Why I Am Not A Conservative” and an explainer on the classical liberalism, a political and economic policy stressing liberty and individualism.

“In the past, this network has done a lot,” Hooks said. “Perhaps more than anyone else to slow the decline of our country … But we’re not here to slow the decline, we’re  here to change the trajectory of this country … The need for a new and different approach couldn’t be any clearer.”

Seidel also lamented the Republican failure to repeal Obamacare, apologizing to donors: “We didn’t do it on health care, we didn’t lead. That won’t happen again.”

There were bright spots on the national agenda, however, with Seidel citing tax reform, deregulation and access to experimental medicine, and Concerned Veterans of America Deputy Director Mark Lucas lauding Department of Veterans Affairs accountability reform.

“So we work with the Trump administration when they are doing things that we think are in harmony with [our ideals] … and we oppose them when we don’t,” Charles Koch told reporters.

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