From the RampartsJunious Ricardo StantonSince You’re Giving Away All That Money . . .“The financial meltdown has been and will continue to plunge the working class into levels of destitution worse than those seen in the “Great Depression.” As a prelude to this banking, Wall Street and our government squanders taxpayer money on idiotic schemes to prop up bankrupt Illuminist banks, Wall Street, insurance companies and select Illuminist corporations. In that process faithful workers are thrown onto the street with no further way of making a living. They are losing their homes, jobs and vehicles and some are living under bridges.” Robert Chapman http://theinternationalforecaster.com/International_ForecasterThus far the US Treasury in cahoots with the Federal Reserve Bank (a cartel of privately owned banks who set US monetary, credit and interest policies) have transferred more than four point six trillion (that’s with a T) dollars of taxpayer owed money to the Wall Street banksters and their cronies. The US Treasury doesn’t have four point six trillion in its vaults so we don’t actually have the money. The Fed creates “money” out of thin air by making a few keystrokes on a computer and crediting it to various accounts. The irony is none of this four point six trillion dollars is going to fix the problem, it will not save one homeowner from default, bankruptcy or foreclosure. It’s all a huge scam; a rip off of gigantic proportions.According to Paulson and Bernnake they have dispensed half of the money from the Troubled Asset Recovery Program (T.A.R.P.) but the banks are still not lending and the economy is getting worse. Does this make sense to you? To get an idea how much money this is, the bailouts are greater than all these previous government interventions combined: “ Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion • S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion • The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion • NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion TOTAL: $3.92 trillion” http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/25/bailout-costs-more-t.htmlImagine, expending all that money and working class folks have nothing to show for it!? This is class warfare at its worst. The US taxpayers are being put on the hook and in hock for trillions of dollars for generations to come. The money is going to the really rich so they can continue their lifestyles, get their bonuses, golden parachutes and offshore accounts. The corporatist media is not telling the truth nor reporting the facts. The fact is we are being ripped off by the government and the financial system royally. Don’t expect President Obama to change or improve the situation because his cabinet is made up of the same people who originally created the environment to rip us off and created this new jack 1929 Stock Market collapse and depression.If the Fed is going to print and give away all that money, devalue the currency already in circulation and the money being put into circulation why not put it to better use? The “bailout” and so called “rescue plans” will not solve the problem. All it is doing is shoveling increasingly worthless money, trillions of dollars in fact, down a sink hole. Sadly the hyper inflation created by the Fed will not help people pay their mortgages, get out of debt or revive the economy. It will devalue the money in your pocket. Thus far they’ve given out half of the T.A.R.P. funds and neither the banks nor the overall economy have anything to show for it! This is criminal, or at the very least insane!I have a better idea. Since they are printing trillions of dollars without concern for the inevitable consequences: devalued dollar, rising costs and eroding of savings and wealth; why not do it in a way that helps the economy and rights a major wrong? What if the US government instead of giving the Wall Street con men, insurance industry crooks, fiduciary gamblers and politicians all that money, gave it to black folks as a form of reparations!? Think about this, with the multiplier effect, every dollar spent generates additional dollars as it turns over in the economy, so if they gave every black person in AmeriKKKa say, five million dollars each, we could jump start the economy immediately! If the government said, “Here, but if you take this you can never complain about racism, what we owe you or how badly we’ve treated you these hundreds of years ever again. Just take this tax free five million dollars and consider the slate clean.” I think most of us would seriously consider taking the money. Given the level of brainwashing, the mindless consumerism and crass materialism most of us are into and our lack of economic sophistication, most folks would run through the money in less than six months. Few would even think about saving it, starting investment clubs, becoming venture capitalists, buying land or valuable assets, investing in Africa or throughout the diaspora. Most folks would run out and buy plasma TVs, clothes, several luxury cars, houses and all manners of jewelry and other gizmos, just like we see on TV! Thirty million black folks with five million in their pockets would revive the US economy really quickly. Think about the impact of this, instead of debt-based consumerism, there would be actual dollars exchanged (even though they would be of less value due to the printing of so much new money). Look how rich white folks, Arabs, the Koreans and Chinese would get off of us!?Things would be really copacetic until folks ran through their money and found themselves flat broke. Then things would be back to “normal” only we would owe more taxes and probably be overextended credit-wise having not set budget limits or thought out the best way to use the money. One thing we could count on is the greed and cunning of the banksters, the shop owners, manufacturers and their flunkies, who would rig the system so the black tax we pay; the added cost other groups put on everything we handle or buy simply because we’re black, would be jacked up considerably. You can bet your last dollar, our adversaries would find ways to con and swindle many of our people out of their money. Sadly, I suspect, things would get back to “normal”, us being poor but enriching everybody else, fairly quickly.There would be some eccentrics who would pool their resources and set up businesses, either here, in Africa or throughout the diaspora. But they would be in the minority. Black folks still wouldn’t patronize black businesses even when they had adequate capital to stock their stores and advertise. Some enlightened blacks would leave the country altogether, but they too would be in the minority. Since humans are creatures of habit, we would find ways to go from millionaires back to dependency, short of a major psychological transformation.Unless we use the coming economic collapse to come together, think in new ways, do things differently and act in our best interests, we will be like the desperate folks stuck in New Orleans during Katrina; minus the water.The truth is, after we received the reparations money, there would be a major spike in the economy, at least as long as the money lasted. Reparations could actually be a short term solution to the collapsing US economy. I am not being facetious with this, as far fetched as it sounds. This idea is at least as viable as giving the same people whose shenanigans have destroyed the economy over the past twenty years: the Fed, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Bank of America Congress etc., additional power and taxpayer money to enrich themselves while the rest of us are reduced to unemployed and homeless, debt peons and indentured wage servants.-30-
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