The Past Week: August 2-8, 2009 (Detroit’s Middle Class Faces Hunger; Accelerating Bank Failures; Eustace Mullins/FOEM’s Site)

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

I’ve been bogged down all week. And yesterday I spent 3 hours online for a seminar involving financial cycles.  Plus, I’ve been working a on meandering piece that will go up next week and have a few more things I’m working on.

But, here are a couple of tidbits that I ran across this week:

First, the middle class is starting to feel the pangs of hunge. CNN coughed up the story:

Hunger hits Detroit’s middle class

snip

In this recession-racked town, the lack of food is a serious problem. It’s a theme that comes up again and again in conversations in Detroit. There isn’t a single major chain supermarket in the city, forcing residents to buy food from corner stores. Often less healthy and more expensive food.

As the area’s economy worsens –unemployment was over 16% in July — food stamp applications and pantry visits have surged.

I know there’s been talk about reclaiming blighted urban lands in places like Flint, MI and turning it back to a natural state and for food production. Apparently, the good citizens of Detroit aren’t waiting around for that as urban gardens are springing up on abandoned property.

Detroiters have responded to this crisis. Huge amounts of vacant land has led to a resurgence in urban farming. Volunteers at local food pantries have also increased.

But the food crunch is intensifying, and spreading to people not used to dealing with hunger. As middle class workers lose their jobs, the same folks that used to donate to soup kitchens and pantries have become their fastest growing set of recipients.

more

What will they do in the winter when the gardens die?

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Wonder how the banks are really doing?  Here’s a view of reality from Jeff Nielson’s Instablog:

Accelerating U.S. bank-failures refute “recovery” hype

With 69 failed banks already this year, bank failures are already on course to exceed the number of failures in 2008 by 400%. However, if they continue accelerating, that increase could easily rise to 500% or 600%.

Meanwhile, despite raising the size of its bribes to take over these failed companies, the FDIC is seeing less bidders step up to bid on these companies. It’s “insurance fund” will be nearly completely exhausted when the pending failure of Texas-based Guaranty Bank takes place – forcing it to tap into a $200 billion “line of credit” from the insolvent U.S. Treasury. Does this sound like an economy which is “recovering”?

He continues with a good overview of housing, consumer credit, business credit, and the bailout as a whole.  It won’t make you happy…

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I’ve added a new link to the Financial blog roll–a wealth of information here!!

DollarDaze

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Finally, a while back American Lassie wrote a post on Eustace Mullins titled Eustace Mullins’ “Secrets of the Federal Reserve”: Read About what Ezra Pound Called “The Great Betrayal”. We had a comment this week that led us back to FOEM’S Site (Friends of Eustace Mullins Society). There are recent pictures of the man himself; he’s alive and kicking!

THE PAST WEEK

Forget the Mainstream Media “Business Analysts”: Economics Prof Explains Obamanomics and Conducts Experiment That Proves His Point

The Past Week: July 26-August 1, 2009 (Inflation vs. Deflation; CNBC Ratings Plunging; Wind Turbines; Perpetuum Jazzile and Simulated Rain)

Eustace Mullins’ “Secrets of the Federal Reserve”: Read About what Ezra Pound Called “The Great Betrayal”

~~By American Lassie

(Editor’s Note: American Lassie has a background in tax accounting.)

(Please also note this disclaimer: Eustace Mullins has long been admired by the right; he has also been labeled as being  a “conspiracy historian” and “anti-Semitic.”  I’ve noted below various sites that offer his writings and comment, both positive and critical, about Mullins.  These days, we need to read and learn all we can…but with critical minds. The reader must make his own judgment on the ideas of Eustace Mullins. This site takes no position on Eustace Mullins at this point, nor the work of David Allen Rivera which is also mentioned.  Some readers might find some of the material interesting and links are provided for further exploration–InsightAnalytical-GRL)

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Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s plan to rescue the U.S. financial system, all $2.5 trillion of it,  has sent markets tumbling. See Geithner’s  biography at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York site, where Geithner served as President from 2003 until his confirmation.  The bio also details his prior activities in international banking at Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and his stint at the Bank for International Settlements.)

This leads me into the matter of The Federal Reserve.   In my opinion, the chairmen of The Federal Reserve, both past and present, have an unhealthy influence on this country.  While Geithner comes to Treasury from serving as President of the Federal Reserve in New York, Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve,  is head of Obama’s economic advisory panel of people from outside the Administration (although there are rumblings that Lawrence (Larry) Summers, Obama’s National Economic Council Director is slowing down the organization of this panel).  Seeing the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke on Capitol Hill with Henry Paulson in September 2008 brings to mind the stealthy way the Federal Reserve was established. (Editor’s Note: Reuters reported on September 21, 2008: Paulson: Foreign Banks Can Use U.S. Rescue Plan …”foreign banks will be able to unload bad financial assets under a $700 billion U.S. proposal….”  I don’t know if this provision is in any of the bailout/stimulus bills that have since passed.–IA-GRL)

An author by the name of Eustace Mullins has been writing about the formation of the Federal Reserve and international bankers for years.

Here’s a little background on Eustace Mullins and how he came to spend so many years of his life researching and trying to get published his works on the Federal Reserve System. (Some of this material is from the “Secrets of the Federal Reserve” site linked below.)  Mr. Mullins is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, a native Virginian, educated at Washington and Lee University; New York University; Ohio University; University of North Dakota;  the Escuelas des Bellas Artes, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Washington, D.C.  While researching his book, Mr. Mullins was on the staff of the Library of Congress.

His book, “Mullins on The Federal Reserve,” was commissioned by the poet Ezra Pound in 1950 and published in 1952 by Kaspar and Horton, New York.  This was the first nationally-circulated revelation of the secret meetings of international bankers at Jekyll Island, Georgia, from 1907-1910.  Dr. Ezra Pound was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth’s hospital, held without trial.  Franklin Roosevelt had personally ordered him indicted on the demand of his three personal assistants, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Currie and Alger Hiss, all of whom were later identified as being connected with communist espionage.

Mr. Mullin’s research was aided by George Stimpson, founder of the National Press Club, who was known as “our walking Library of Congress” by Washington newspapermen.  Mullins was turned down by 18 publishers before one finally told him he would never get his book published.  After 2 years, the book was published in a small edition in 1952 by John Kaspar and David Horton using the title “Mullins on The Federal Reserve.”  In  1954 a second edition was published in New Jersey as “The Federal Reserve Conspiracy.”

In 1955 Guido Roeder brought out a German edition in Oberammergau, Germany.  The entire edition of 10,000 books was seized and burned. The burning of the book was upheld on April 21, 1961 by Judge Izrael Katz of the Bavarian Supreme Court.  The U.S. Government refused to intervene because James B. Conanat, the U.S. High Commissioner to Germany, had approved the initial book burning order.  In 1980 a new German edition appeared.  The identical book that was burned in 1955 now circulates freely.  The U.S. government no longer dictates the internal affairs of Germany.

The conspirators that caused Ezra Pound to spend thirteen and one half years in prison dropped charges in 1958. Ruthless international financiers had used their influence to imprison a man to keep his mouth shut.

“Here are the simple facts of the great betrayal.  Wilson and House knew that they were doing something momentous.  One cannot fathom men’s motives and this pair probably believed in what they were up to.  What they did not believe in was representative government.  They believed in government by an uncontrolled oligarchy whose acts would only become apparent after an interval so long that the electorate would be forever incapable of doing efficient to remedy depredations.” —-Dr. Ezra Pound (St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C., 1950

[By “House,” he means Edward Mandell House (1858-1938) the son of British financier Thomas W. House, who made his fortune by supplying the South with supplies from France and England during the Civil War.
By “Wilson,” he means U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson wrote about House, “Mr. House is my second personalty.  His thoughts and mine are one.”]

An international banking group had secretly planned the writing of the “Federal Reserve Act” and Congress’ enactment of the plan into law.  International bankers held secret meetings at Jekyll Island, Georgia – 1907-1910 – where the draft of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was written.

Mr. Mullin’s book in it’s entirety is on the internet. Read “Secrets of the Federal Reserve.”  The international bankers are named – with pictures, charts, etc.  Another book by Mullins on the subject of “The New World Order” entitled  “A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism: The history and practices of the parasitic financial elite”  was published on the internet and is said to be “the most widely circulated book about the New World Order ever written is also still available here at the Modern History Project.

Nothing changes, it remains the same.  Taxpayer money is feeding the big banks, thanks to Henry Paulson AKA Mr. Goldman Sachs. And now, Timothy Geithner.

In the words of John Francis Hylan (April 20, 1868 – January 12, 1936), was the Mayor of New York City from 1918 to 1925:

“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like an octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation.  It seizes in its long and powerful tentacles, our executive officers, our legislative bodies our schools, our coourts, our newspapers, and every agency created for the public protection”…”The little coterie of international bankers virtually runs the United States Governmant for their own selfish purposes.”

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More on Mullins:

Secrets of the Federal Reserve (site with text of Mullins’ book, with a  full index)

A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism: The history and practices of the parasitic financial elite (Modern History Project text of Mullins’ book)

An Afternooon with Eustace Mullins (transcript in which he discusses accusations re: Jews)

Final Warning:  A History of the New World Order –David Allen Rivera

Sites which debunk Mullins:

From the “New York City Activist” blog:

Please do NOT trust Eustace Mullins as an authority on the Federal Reserve System!

Some of the rhetoric against the Federal Reserve System