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Congress Funds Government with More Funny Money- Banks Get Free Bailout Pass in Return

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Congress Funds Government with More Funny Money- Banks Get Free Bailout Pass in Return

If you don’t get it by now, this should help solidify who is really running the show in our nation. While Congress passed a $1.1 Trillion spending bill to keep itself running Congress included a provision that does nothing more than give a free pass to further bail-outs of the “too big to fails” in a case of one hand washes the other.

Money from Nothing Doesn’t Come Free

The Federal Reserve fiat funny money that is generated from nowhere doesn’t come free. Citibank and the other “too big to fails”, which are among the Primary Dealers that handle the T-bills and bond transactions that create the money from nothing that the Federal Reserve generates, have now legally been given a free pass to speculate on the taxpayer’s dime.

If their speculations fail, the taxpayer is now liable to pay for their losses. In other words, if they gamble and lose, we pay for their losses. The banks win. We the people, lose.

Only a Few Senators Openly Opposed the Move

The provision, written by Citibank according to Elizabeth Warren, was opposed by only a few in the Senate. Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Sen. David Vitter voiced opposition to the provision tacked on to the spending bill. Sen. David Vitter, R-La., joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on an amendment to remove the provision from the government funding bill, they say allows taxpayer bailouts to financial institutions that engage in risky derivative trading. It didn’t matter. The supposedly “conservative” Republicans joined hands in ignoring it and passing the spending bill with it attached anyway.

Warren and Vitter both agreed it was wrong for Congress to add a last-minute provision to a spending bill allowing derivative trading to be included in transactions covered by government insurance programs.

“Ever since the new financial regulations went into place, Wall Street has been working behind the scenes to open another loophole so they could gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system,” Warren said. “Congress should not put taxpayers on the hook for another bailout, and this giveaway that was drafted by Citigroup lobbyists has no place in a critical government funding bill.”

Added Vitter:

“Before Congress starts handing out Christmas presents to the megabanks and Wall Street — we should vote on this bipartisan amendment. We need to remove these risky derivatives that aren’t even necessary for normal banking purposes and would only make future taxpayer funded bailouts more likely.”

So, How Do the Banks Feel About the Move?

The American Banking Association argued that stripping Section 716 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that prohibits federal insurance to financial institutions that engage in certain derivatives activities is the right move.

“The majority of banks, including community banks, that use swaps do so in order to hedge or mitigate risk from their ordinary business activities, including lending. Hedging and mitigating risk are not only good business practices, but are important tools that banks use to help borrowing customers hedge their own business risks,” said ABA Executive Vice President James Ballentine. “The push-out requirement to move some swaps into separate affiliates makes one-stop shopping impossible for businesses ranging from family farms to energy companies that want to hedge against commodity price changes.”

Why of course, they would feel that way. Heck, who wouldn’t like to go to Atlantic City or Las Vegas on the provision that if they win, they get to keep it, but if they lose someone else foots the bill for their losses.

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Is Elizabeth Warren for Real?

I don’t know whether Elizabeth Warren is for real or not. She could be what the Communists use to pass through draconian legislation and gets its system implanted which is to say “controlled opposition”.

In other words, they plant or allow someone to oppose their moves while achieving compromise designed to further the Communist system. It makes the end result more palatable to the citizens who are being enslaved under State tyranny that way. Perhaps Warren is serving that role. We don’t really know.

However, her statements ring true for the majority of us who end up holding the bill here:

“Who does Congress work for?” Warren said in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday afternoon. “Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers, or does it work for all the people?” […]“Now, the House of Representatives is about to show us the worst of government for the rich and powerful,” she continued. “The House is about to vote on a budget deal, a deal negotiated behind closed doors that slips in a provision that would let derivatives traders on Wall Street gamble with taxpayer money and get bailed out by the government when their risky bets threaten to blow up our financial system.”

Really now though Elizabeth, the handwriting is already on the wall. We are moving ever closer to a Statist government that takes care of their chosen elite and makes “We the People” work for them. But hey, I appreciate your sentiments anyway, even if they are quite obvious by now to anyone with half a brain and paying attention.

So How Does Obama Feel About It?

Well, the man that interrupted his campaign to lobby in front of the House as a Senator in 2008, to pass the bank bailout bill said that if he could write the bill, “I suspect it’d be slightly different.”

President Barack Obama urged senators to approve the spending bill, even though it has provisions he doesn’t like:

“That is not the circumstance we find ourselves in, and I think what the American people very much are looking for is some practical governance and the willingness to compromise.”

Practical Governance? Passing a spending bill that has more dollars in it than there are galaxies in the universe is practical?

Willingness to compromise? You call passing the buck to the public a compromise?

Hey, what do you expect. This is the guy, after all, who gave us “Change We Need” and “Change We Can Believe In”.

Is anyone still a sucker enough to continue believing today? Astoundingly, yes!

End Result

Congress and our government has just acknowledged who their true master is and it ain’t the electorate. It should be clear now who is actually running the show- the Federal Reserve!

They control Congress because they hold the purse strings. Without their funny money, Congress would be out of work today. But they aren’t. Their jobs are secure, for now. I knew they would be.

As for us, we just got handed more inflation which means our spending power will be further watered down. The money we work for will buy less because prices will rise to accommodate more money in circulation without an increase in production of real wealth.

How It Works- According to the Fed Itself

Modern Money Mechanics a publication issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago puts it this way:

In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper, deposits merely book entries. Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally far less than their face value. What, then, makes these instruments – checks, paper money, and coins – acceptable at face value in payment of all debts and for other monetary uses? Mainly, it is the confidence people have that they will be able to exchange such money for other financial assets and for real goods and services whenever they choose to do so. Money, like anything else, derives its value from its scarcity in relation to its usefulness.
Control of the quantity of money is essential if its value is to be kept stable. Money’s real value can be measured only in terms of what it will buy. Therefore, its value varies inversely with the general level of prices. Assuming a constant rate of use, if the volume of money grows more rapidly than the rate at which the output of real goods and services increases, prices will rise. This will happen because there will be more money than there will be goods and services to spend it on at prevailing prices.

This is straight from the horse’s mouth- the Federal Reserve itself. If you aren’t getting this yet, I suggest you bone up with some of the recommended reading below. You need to wake up and smell the money so you can prepare accordingly. As Tiny Tim said in the Alistair Sim movie at the end- “And God Bless Us All.”