The Binary Circumstance

In California, marriage is just a domestic partnership between a man and a woman who think they’re better than everyone else.

Ron Paul has sponsored The Federal Reserve Transparency Act 2009 in the House which calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve. His effort is gathering momentum. The bill now has 175 co-sponsors.

Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson is joining in and sent a letter to his colleagues asking them for their support. It says in part:

Criticism of banker influence and control of our monetary system is not new. However, the urgency of the financial crisis and the actions of the Fed picking investment bank winners and losers have changed the nature of the criticism. The Senate just passed a non-binding resolution requiring more transparency at the Federal Reserve in its Budget Resolution.

Still, neither the GAO nor the Federal Reserve Inspector General has audited the books of the Federal Reserve or its regional banks. The Federal Reserve has refused multiple inquiries from both the House and the Senate to disclose who is receiving trillions of dollars from the central banking system. The Federal Reserve has redacted the central terms of the no-bid contracts it has issued to Wall Street firms like Blackrock and PIMCO, without disclosure required of the Treasury, and is participating in new and exotic programs like the trillion-dollar TALF to leverage the Treasury’s balance sheet. With discussions of allocating even more power to the Federal Reserve as the ‘systemic risk regulator’ of the credit markets, more oversight over the central bank’s operations is clearly necessary.

There is also an online petition that you can sign to show your support for the bill.

Gerald Celente, director of Trends Research Institute on CNBC:

“We’re looking at a bailout bubble that’s way bigger than the dotcom bubble before it and the real-estate bubble that we’re now getting out of, or attempting to,” Celente said.

[...]

The real-estate bubble was born out of the aftermath of the dotcom bubble because the Fed slashed interest rates and made more funds available, according to Celente.

But because the US government now has a vast equity position in financial institutions, it could mean that there is no bouncing back if a bailout-induced bubble bursts, Celente said.

[...]

“As you look through history, it seems like governments become emboldened by their failures,” he added.

Celente pointed out that according to the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, the merger of state and corporate powers was called fascism.

“We could call this fascism lite,” he said, referring to the government involvement in free enterprise. “After these kind of catastrophic collapses, sometimes they’re followed by war.”

War is a useful tool for the state as it consolidates more power into the hands of the state when events are causing it to lose control. War also kills off a surplus of unemployed people, most of them males.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is nationalizing companies so fast his country is starting to look like the United States.

President Hugo Chavez ordered the takeover of at least six metal, ceramic and other companies Thursday, accelerating his push to spread socialism and build “an industrial complex” in Venezuela.

[...]

“We’re planning a single large, integrated industrial complex,” he said.

Chavez’s government has nationalized major steel, cement, electricity, telecommunications and oil projects since 2006 in a bid to expand the reach of the state.

Automakers? Banks? Health care?