By
Andrew Huszar: I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a
former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the
centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying
experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to
spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize
the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street
bailout of all time.
Five years ago this
month, on Black Friday, the Fed launched an unprecedented shopping
spree. By that point in the financial crisis, Congress had already
passed legislation, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, to halt the U.S.
banking system's free fall. Beyond Wall Street, though, the economic
pain was still soaring. In the last three months of 2008 alone, almost
two million Americans would lose their jobs.
The
Fed said it wanted to help—through a new program of massive bond
purchases. There were secondary goals, but Chairman Ben Bernanke made
clear that the Fed's central motivation was to "affect credit conditions
for households and businesses": to drive down the cost of credit so
that more Americans hurting from the tanking economy could use it to
weather the downturn. For this reason, he originally called the
initiative "credit easing."
By Andrew Emett: On the evening of March 5,
2012, the FBI raided Jeremy Hammond’s apartment in the south side of
Chicago. Betrayed by one of his own, Jeremy had no idea that the server
used to dump his Stratfor hack had been provided by the Federal Bureau
of Investigation.
If you’re a part of this human rights movement, or even if you’re
simply male, then you also know the present culture believes that for
those beasts of burden called “men,” a persistent climate of attack is
just about perfect to keep those unruly animals in line.
By
Andrew Huszar: I can only say: I'm sorry, America. As a
former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the
centerpiece program of the Fed's first plunge into the bond-buying
experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to
spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I've come to recognize
the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street
bailout of all time.
UK BANNED Press TV: The Israeli regime plans to build some 20,000 more illegal settler units in the occupied West Bank.
By A CDC study in 20051
showed that 1 in 6 boys experienced unwanted sexual contact by the time
they reached the age of 18. The number for girls was a bit larger, it
was 1 in 4. So 25% of girls and 16% of boys were reported to have had
unwanted sexual activity prior to the age of 18.
Submitted by Tyler Durden: Just over four years ago, we highlighted a
recently declassified top secret 1968 telegram to the Secretary of
State from the American Embassy in Paris, in which the big picture
thinking behind the creation of the IMF's Special Drawing Right (rolled
out shortly thereafter in 1969), or SDRs, was laid out. In that memo it
was revealed that despite what some may think, the fundamental driver
behind the promotion of a supranational reserve paper currency had one
goal in mind: allowing the US to "remain masters of gold."
They put lawmakers more or less indirectly on their payroll, and if
that doesn’t work, they add extortion – with splendid results. For
example, the Washington State Senate just passed legislation that would
hand Boeing $9 billion in tax subsidies.
And then there’s the revolving door through which industry insiders
circle in and out of government agencies until the industry dominates
the agency that is supposed to regulate it. A victory called regulatory capture.