This a report from Bloomberg.com….

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-21/wall-street-aristocracy-got-1-2-trillion-in-fed-s-secret-loans.html

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Recently a friend of mine emailed this to me:

The first-ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an Independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill (HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out.

Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to Congress about the effects an audit would have on the markets. Nevertheless, the results of the first audit in the Federal Reserve’s nearly 100-year history are on Senator Sander’s webpage. http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 (TRILLION) had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland . From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an “all-inclusive loan program,” but virtually none of the money has been returned, and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious: the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

To place $16 trillion into perspective, remember that the GDP of the United States is only $14.12 trillion. The entire national debt of the United States government spanning its 200+ year history is only $14.5 trillion. The budget that is being debated so heavily in Congress is only $3.5 trillion. Take all of the outrage and debate over the $1.5 trillion deficit into consideration, and swallow this Red pill: There was no debate about whether $16 trillion would be given to failing banks and failing corporations around the world.

In late 2008 the TARP Bailout bill was passed and loans of $800 billion were given to failing banks and companies. That was a blatant lie considering the fact that Goldman Sachs alone received $814 billion. As it turns out, the Federal Reserve donated $2.5 trillion to Citigroup, while Morgan Stanley received $2.04 trillion. The Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank, a German bank, split about a trillion and numerous other banks received hefty chunks of the $16 trillion.

This is a clear case of “socialism for the rich and rugged, you’re-on-your-own individualism for everyone else,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). When you have conservative Republican stalwarts like Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Ron Paul (R-TX) as well as self-identified Democratic socialists like Bernie Sanders, all fighting against the Federal Reserve, you know that it is no longer an issue of Right vs. Left. When you have every single member of the Republican Party in Congress and progressive Congressmen like Dennis Kucinich sponsoring a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, you realize that the Federal Reserve is an entity into itself, which has no oversight and no accountability.
If the Federal Reserve and the bankers who control it believe that they can continue to devalue the savings of Americans and continue to destroy the US economy, they will have to face the realization that their trillion dollar printing presses can be stopped as people wake up to this fraud and robbery.

Regardless of whether this money is fiat money (money printed with nothing of value to back it), if it is a currency forced on society and the world with enforcement by the Fed, IRS, the U.S. military, et al, (which it is), the acts of the Federal Reserve are, in essence, the transfer of greater wealth to the rich insider banks and corporations, while the rest of the world grows poorer as the value of this “funny money” grows less and less in purchasing power. (This is what happens when you put money into the economy that has not been earned but just “created.” It devalues our money that was earned.)

These insider banks, etc., then, exchange this funny money for gold and silver, the real wealth of the world, which then re-inflates the world with more and more devaluing federal reserve notes. This, then, creates hyper-inflation, increasing the cost of all resources and commodities, while gold and silver climb to never-seen-before levels of value.

The list of institutions that received the most money from the Federal Reserve can be found on page 144 of the GAO Audit at http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf and are as follows:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America : $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC ( United Kingdom ): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank ( Germany ): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS ( Switzerland ): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse ( Switzerland ): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland ( United Kingdom ): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)

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Chapter 13 Bankruptcy provides a way for individuals with a regular source of income to pay off their debts over a period of time and under the supervision of the Court and a trustee. Corporations and partnerships may not file under Chapter 13. Individuals may file only if their unsecured debts do not exceed $336,900.00 and their secured debts do not exceed $1,010,650.00. A plan specifying how each creditor will be paid is filed with the petition or immediately after. Payments are made to the chapter 13 Trustee who makes distribution to creditors according to the provisions of a confirmed plan. Depending on what the debtor is able to do, the debts may be paid back in whole or in part.

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Chapter 7 bankruptcy relief is available to individuals, corporations and partnerships. A chapter 7 trustee is appointed to take possession of, and liquidate the estate. State law determines what portion of a Debtor’s property he or she may keep by claiming it exempt. The trustee will sell the rest of the debtor’s property and distribute the proceeds to creditors. If all the debtor’s property is exempt, the case will be a “no-asset case, ” with no distribution to creditors.

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Barton M. Biggs, former chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley, is presently a money manager running Traxis Partners, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund based in New York City. According to Biggs, on September 10, 2008 just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Fed held $480 billion in securities. By October of 2010, that figure soared to $2.4 trillion…..a 400% increase! 6 This is due to the Fed adopting the monetary policy known as Quantitative Easing. (Quantitative Easing is the policy wherein the central bank prints more money which it uses to buy government bonds and other financial assets, in order to increase the money supply and the excess reserves of the banking system.) Would you think any country whose monetary base increased 400% in just two years would ultimately experience the ravages of inflation? We believe the noted economist, Milton Friedman, was correct in his thinking that when the Central Bank prints too much paper money inflation results.

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If foreclosures continue to happen banks will increase their REO inventory and excess inventory can mean declining house prices.

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It is quite common in today’s economy to find people with large amounts of consumer debt. I routinely hear from people who have been making 35% of their yearly income to minimum payments that do not even reduce the principle balance owed. Also, it is sadly very common to hear from people who have more debt than what they earn in a single year. It is extremely difficult to help these people understand that if they are only able to make minimum payments that they will be spending their entire lives in vain as slaves to debt trying to pay off a balance that continues to grow.

In trying to help understand how to best discuss this debt slavery to people I looked up slavery in the Encyclopedia Britannica and discovered an article on the point that debt slavery is indeed a kind of slavery where often people enter into debt-slavery willingly. As I thought about this I wondered about how people enter into contracts with out reading any of the long legal jargon specifying the terms and conditions. I don’t think that people plan on becoming debt slaved no more than enslaved people through out history planned on becoming slaves. I think that it is because people just don’t realize what they are getting themselves into or understand the math behind compounding interest. If more people new what they were getting into it is no doubt in my mind that they would never enter into such a soul-sacrificing contract.

The most established method of defending your bank account from a levy (bank account garnishment) is to add an additional signer to the account. However you should know that in a number of states it requires two additional signers, and that you modify the signature card so that neither party has exclusive rights to withdraw the funds. So for example: Instead of Bob or Nancy, the signature card would require Bob and Nancy.

The legal base that prohibits third parties or creditors from impressing a levy against a bank account explains that when the party levied against does not have sole rights to withdraw the money, the creditor cannot put in force a levy against the bank account because of the opposing interests of extra signers.

In the United States Supreme Court decision of U.S. v. National Bank of Commerce, 86 L.Ed.2d 565 (U.S.Ark. 06/26/1985); 105 S.Ct. 2919; U.S.Ark.,1985; 86 L.Ed.2d 565, 53 USLW 4856, 56 A.F.T.R.2d 85- 5210, 85-2 USTC P 9482), dated June 26, 1985, the following was determined:

Supreme Court of the United States UNITED STATES, Petitioner
v.
NATIONAL BANK OF COMMERCE.
No. 84-498.
Argued April 15, 1985.

Decided June 26, 1985.

Government filed notice of levy upon accounts of taxpayer with bank. On cross motions for summary judgment, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Granett Thomas Eisele, Chief Judge, 554 F.Supp. 110, entered summary judgment for the bank. Government appealed. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 726 F.2d 1292, affirmed. Certiorari was granted. The Supreme Court, Justice Blackmun, held that the IRS had a right to levy on the joint accounts of the taxpayer where the delinquent taxpayer had an absolute right under state law to withdraw from the joint accounts, without notice to his co depositors, and the bank, in its turn, was obligated with respect to the taxpayer’s right to that property, since state law required it to honor any withdrawal request he might make.

The issue presented is whether the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may lawfully seize a joint bank account for payment of a single code depositor’s delinquent taxes when it does not know how much, if any, of the account belongs to the delinquent.

Insurance offered by credit card companies is a scam. This scam is used collectively by the largest credit card companies because it is such a cash cow. Every single consumer advocate group and financial consultant has nothing great to speak about this sort of insurance and all will advise that you don’t sign up for it. You don’t need this insurance and, yet if you wanted to take advantage of it, you almost certainly couldn’t. This is one of the credit card industry largest scams ever invented. For XY amount each month or payment period, they pledge to pay off your balance if you become laid off or in poor health. However, in reality, if you read the terms and conditions extremely carefully, you will recognize that the odds of you ever receiving a single dime out of them are enormously high. Sometimes credit card companies don’t even go through the inconvenience to get you to enroll in this program — they just simply sign you up for it without your authorization and begin charging you for it — and a number of of them get sued for it. Credit card companies typically are compelled to pay huge judgments for this kind of scam. In particular, Providian was forced to pay the biggest judgment ever at the time when it enrolled customers in credit insurance programs without their knowledge.