what we need is a bit more radical PROGRAM. The idealization of "market forces and prices" (Ron Paul) is not a workable program, as laissez faire leads as surely to complete collapse of the Capitalist System as do the various interventionist approaches. Why not read something from Trotsky's Transitional Program (1938). http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text.htm#pb

Expropriation of the Private Banks and
State-ization of the Credit System
Imperialism means the domination of finance capital. Side by side with the trusts and syndicates, and very frequently rising above them, the banks concentrate in their hands the actual command over the economy. In their structure the banks express in a concentrated form the entire structure of modern capital: they combine tendencies of monopoly with tendencies of anarchy. They organize the miracles of technology, giant enterprises, mighty trusts; and they also organize high prices, crises and unemployment. It is impossible to take a single serious step in the struggle against monopolistic despotism and capitalistic anarchy – which supplement one another in their work of destruction – if the commanding posts of banks are left in the hands of predatory capitalists. In order to create a unified system of investments and credits, along a rational plan corresponding to the interests of the entire people, it is necessary to merge all the banks into a single national institution. Only the expropriation of the private banks and the concentration of the entire credit system in the hands of the state will provide the latter with the necessary actual, i.e., material resources – and not merely paper and bureaucratic resources – for economic planning.

The expropriation of the banks in no case implies the expropriation of bank deposits. On the contrary, the single state bank will be able to create much more favorable conditions for the small depositors than could the private banks. In the same way, only the state bank can establish for farmers, tradesmen and small merchants conditions of favorable, that is, cheap credit. Even more important, however, is the circumstance that the entire economy – first and foremost large-scale industry and transport directed by a single financial staff, will serve the vital interests of the workers and all other toilers.

However, the state-ization of the banks will produce these favorable results only if the state power itself passes completely from the hands of the exploiters into the hands of the toilers.

I just finished listening to an interview of a woman who should be known to every American - Catherine Austin Fitts. Fitts suffered through 18 audits and investigations, and 12 pieces of litigation over 13 years, and came through clean as whistle.

Her sin was trying to facilitate the discovery of national fraud and mismanagement of Federal Government dollars. She had started a company which made software, called Community Wizard, which would connect to the internet, and download information which would show sources and used of Federal dollars in your (or any) community. This software made the tremendous waste of tax dollars stick out like a sore thumb. Most federal funding is discussed in terms of function, not locality.

E.g., in 1996, when running the Distressed Assets program for HUD, she found communities where HUD would spend $200,000 to $250,000 per apartment to rehab or build public housing, while $50,000 would have allowed the purchase and rehab of a foreclosed or distressed property in the same neighborhood.

Her reward for her economic patriotism was, besides the audits, investigations, and litigation already mentioned, to have the Department of Justice seize her company and to "essentially" steal her software.

Fitts claims that widespread adoption of her software would have made the housing bubble impossible. The principle, here, is that "following the money" by local citizens is the ultimate form of financial control - superior, in fact, to laws and regulation (which, she explains, have been perverted to prosecute honest people; and that's in the less reprehensible cases; in the more reprehensible cases, sex scandals were conjured up to "get the honest people out of government")

Fitts doesn't think much of any bailout, much less a bailout with no oversight. She is basically for the real economy, under as much local control as possible. Centralizing economic forces like Wall Street help suck money out of local communities, and even help put pressure on local jobs by funding expatriation of businesses. See her website, solari.com, for more information on what she calls "the tapeworm economy".

Another economic patriot every American should know about is Walter Burien, who discovered and made public the Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports (CAFR) - essentially a legally required, second set of books kept by all levels of government, but discussed in no newspaper, of even, AFAIK, any "alternative" media such as Mother Jones.

When you see how much money is involved in CAFR assets - in the multi trillions of dollars - you may be thankful that the $700 billions rape bailout is so public. The CAFR's and HUD-level of fraud and mismanagement is an old and continuing story, that gets zero publicity in the case of the former, and very little (that I know of, anyway) in the case of the latter.

================================================================

N.B.: See Fitts comments re Jack Kemp, to see how high the corruption goes.
See also http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/economy/ethnic_cleansing_usa.html for more info on Catherine Austin Fitts

See 19:00 into Burien's April 28th 2001 lecture to the Arizona Breakfast Club :

if you look at the composite total of all, inclusive of the Federal government, standing liquid investment assets, as a conservative figure, is about 60 Trillion dollars

The public may be kept in the dark about CAFR's, but not everybody is. People who receive a copy each and every year are mentioned 17:50 into the video:

Every editor of every primary paper was sent a copy (of the CAFR) each and every year. The CEO and every one of the directors from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN were sent a copy each and every year and they have been for 18 years...I found out that deans of all of the colleges were sent a copy each and every year

http://www.pdamerica.org
http://www.change-congress.org

The Wall Street Examiner (alternative wall street blogger)

Tar Pit Operation at Work

I think Russ is on to something. The embedded links are a must to understand what he is saying.

Russ Hallberg
We can do more for 911 truth with a stable economy than a collapsed one. House Minority Leader John Boehner's proposal merits some support. Roosevelt slipped in a strengthened FED during the New Deal. Watch out.