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Author Topic: Federal Reserve 'Rip-Off' Explained In Simple Language...  (Read 3174 times)
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WhiskeyGirl
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« on: April 05, 2011, 06:09:51 PM »

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“Upwards of 70% of Fed discount window lending went offshore at times,” Rep. Paul explained in the statement. “These lending activities provided no benefit to American taxpayers, the American economy, or even directly to American banks.”

And not only did the bailouts not provide benefits, they often actively ripped off U.S. taxpayers. The Libyan-owned bank and countless other American and foreign banks were taking loans with virtually zero interest from the Fed. And as collateral, they were putting up U.S. Treasury securities, which pay a much higher rate of interest than banks were paying to the Fed. So essentially the banks were profiting, with the help of the Fed’s bailouts, at the expense of American taxpayers. 

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“It is becoming more and more obvious that the Fed operates for the benefit of a few privileged banks, banks that never suffer for bad decisions they make,” Paul wrote in his most recent column. “Quite the opposite — as we have seen since October 2008, under our current monetary system politically-connected banks are paid to make bad decisions.”

read more here - http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics-mainmenu-44/6976-rep-paul-plans-hearing-on-feds-foreign-bailouts
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WhiskeyGirl
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« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2011, 08:36:50 PM »

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'I will maintain to my deathbed that we made every effort to save Lehman, but we were just unable to do so because of a lack of legal authority." So said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in 2009. The statement was striking—not because it was false, but because the Fed lacked explicit legal authority to do so much of what it did during the financial crisis. Drawing the line at Lehman seemed arbitrary, and it proved that the Fed has become an unaccountable power within American government.

Mr. Bernanke's insistence that the Fed is restrained by some obscure statute is central to his argument that the Fed is a body subject to the check of external forces. But it's not. The principal check on its power is the self-restraint of its chairman, a point proven by the Lehman example: Had Mr. Bernanke saved Lehman, who would have enforced the statute that he had violated? No one. That's because the Fed, as currently configured, has no opposing force to rein it in.

In the beginning, it was not so. When the Fed was created in 1913, the gold standard limited its power as did the balance between the 12 reserve banks across the country and the Federal Reserve Board in Washington. Lawmakers thought that the reserve banks would represent regional economic interests in tension with the national political agenda of the board in Washington. ...

Whose interests does the Fed represent?  Foreign banks?  Washington politicians?  Wealthy unions and pension funds?  Special interests?  Main Street?

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Members of Congress seeking to restrict the Fed's power need to consider what oppositional force is truly capable of hemming it in. One answer is a revived gold standard, which would once again obligate the Fed to redeem dollars for gold at a fixed rate.

Equally effective would be to leave the Fed and the dollar system untouched, but to allow gold a level playing field on which to compete with the dollar. Utah has already taken the first step in this direction by passing a law formally recognizing gold as legal tender...

read more here - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703806304576235011671013644.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
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All my posts are just my humble opinions.  Please take with a grain of salt.  Smile

It doesn't do any good to hate anyone,
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WhiskeyGirl
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« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2011, 08:43:33 PM »

(snip)

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TCF National Bank is a unit of TCF Financial Corporation and it sued Mr Bernanke and the Federal Reserve's board of governors in an effort to challenge legislation surrounding 2010's Dodd-Frank regulation overhaul bill.

The Federal Reserve proposed in December 2010 that debit interchange fees should be capped, but Timothy Kelly, a TCF National Bank lawyer, said: "We're going to lose $6 million per month. We can't recover it from the government and we can't recover it from the retailers."

Earlier in the month, it was reported that a Libya-owned bank received 73 loans from the Federal Reserve in the 18 months following the fall of Lehman Brothers Holdings.

read more here - http://www.bobsguide.com/guide/news/2011/Apr/5/US_Federal_Reserve_to_face_credit_card_lawsuit.html

If they're losing $6 million a month, how much did they make before the change?  What about all the other banks?

How many billions a month do they make in fees?

Did the Libyans pay back those 73 loans?  Or, is that money gone forever?  Paid for on the back of working families on Main Street?
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All my posts are just my humble opinions.  Please take with a grain of salt.  Smile

It doesn't do any good to hate anyone,
they'll end up in your family anyway...
WhiskeyGirl
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« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2011, 08:55:40 PM »

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Among those pages were documents showing that Arab Banking Corp., then part-owned by Libya’s central bank, had aggregate loans of $35-billion (U.S.) in the 18-month period following the failure of Lehman.

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In a letter to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and another official yesterday, independent Senator Bernard Sanders raised serious questions about the move.

“It is incomprehensible to me that while credit worthy small businesses in Vermont and throughout the country could not receive affordable loans, the Federal Reserve was providing tens of billions of dollars in credit to a bank that is substantially owned by the Central Bank of Libya,” he wrote.

“To make matters worse, our assistance to this Libyan-controlled bank did not end there,” he added in the letter released publicly. “On March 4, the Treasury Department exempted from economic sanctions the Arab Banking Corp. and any other bank that is owned or controlled by the Libyan government operating under the laws of a different country.”

And here’s one more issue for the senator:

“As a result of a provision I authored in the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, we learned that from Dec. 20, 2007 through March 11, 2010, the Federal Reserve provided over 45 emergency loans to the Arab Banking Corp. with an interest rate as low as 0.25 per cent.

"All of these loans were backed by collateral in U.S. Treasury securities purchased by the Arab Banking Corp. In other words, at the same time that the Arab Banking Corp. was borrowing money from one arm of the U.S. government at near zero interest rates, it was also lending money to the U.S. Treasury and receiving a higher interest rate.”

read more here - http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article1966694.html

How many Americans would like a home mortgage with just .25% interest?  What's the current rate?  4-5%?

I also recall a lender that specialized in bridge loans to small and medium sized business was closed about two years ago, leaving small and medium size business without options...

Meanwhile, the Fed gave billions, if not trillions to foreigners...

What else are they hiding?
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All my posts are just my humble opinions.  Please take with a grain of salt.  Smile

It doesn't do any good to hate anyone,
they'll end up in your family anyway...
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