World-News

The Nation
by William Greider

05/10/10

The weirdness of this political system is reflected in the fact that it takes a Socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, and a libertarian Republican from Texas, Rep. Ron Paul, to beat the banking lobby. The Democrats are making a show of ‘Wall Street reform’ but choking on the tough issues. Republicans are in the tank, as expected, though nervous about the public fury. Sanders and Paul, however, found an opening with their bill to force a GAO audit of the sacrosanct Federal Reserve. This is a big deal, much bigger than most imagine. Congress has sputtered for years about the Fed’s imperious secrecy but never found the nerve to do anything. The Sanders-Paul audit bill, if it passes, will only be a first breach in the wall, but it promises to keep alive popular demands for more fundamental reforms...

http://www.thenation.com/article/outing-fed



Fed audit under fire

Freedom's Phoenix
by US Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)

05/10/10

It doesn’t come as too much of a surprise that the measure to audit the Federal Reserve is coming under continuous fire from the central bank and its cronies. For the first time since the Federal Reserve was created nearly a century ago, they have hired an actual lobbyist to pound the pavement on Capitol Hill. This is a desperate effort to hang on to the privilege of secrecy and lack of accountability they have enjoyed for so long. Last week showed they are getting their money’s worth in the Senate. At the very last minute on the floor of the Senate, supposed compromise language was agreed to and substituted in the Sanders Amendment to the Financial Reform Bill. This language was acceptable to the administration, committee leadership, and to the Fed. The trouble is, while it is better than no audit at all, it guts the spirit of a truly meaningful audit of the most crucial transactions of the Fed. In fact, rather than still calling the Sanders Amendment an audit, maybe it should instead be called more of a disclosure at this point...

http://tinyurl.com/2f7joqj



Regulate or capitulate

In These Times
by Roger Bybee

05/19/10

The battle over regulation of Wall Street will settle at least one question, says Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.): ‘Whether the Congress has the ability to regulate Wall Street or Wall Street continues to regulate the Congress.’ Related to the question of who-regulates-whom is a strategic choice for President Barack Obama and the Democrats. With polls showing little belief in the administration’s willingness to stand up for the powerless, the Democrats could recoup sagging enthusiasm by promoting tough regulation of Wall Street, forcing a breakup of mega-banks and subjecting all risky instruments (’derivatives’) to full disclosure. But signs suggest that Obama’s inner circle has rejected this approach...

http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5996/regulate_or_capitulate



Critical thinking: How to think about regulation

Downsize DC
by Perry Willis

06/07/10

Millions of people believe … We need the government to regulate business people, otherwise they will run wild, laying waste to the environment, and selling us bad food, bad drugs, and harmful products. It would be silly to claim that business people never do these things. After all … * Not all people are good. * Neither are people who are mostly good, consistently good. * And sometimes goodness has nothing to do with it — sometimes people simply make mistakes, out of ignorance or carelessness. But politicians and bureaucrats are people too, and subject to these same failings. Do we really solve the problem of human imperfection by giving one small group of imperfect people vast power over all the others?

http://tinyurl.com/24txfvj



Juneteenth: Slavery, the Civil War, and government

Dallas Libertarian Examiner
by Garry Reed

06/07/10

One reader noted logically, ‘We’re all slaves, human tax livestock. It’s a bit hypocritical for a judge to imprison someone for forced labor, while forcing people to hand money over to his organization on a daily basis in the form of taxation.’ This started a chain reaction of blowback from people who fiercely cling to the mythology that individual slavery and government slavery are different …

http://tinyurl.com/2br6nal


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

--------

Authenticating the Inauthentic

Anne Elizabeth Moore, Truthout: "In recent years, much of our economy - and now, almost the entirety of our media - has come to rest on the public display of authenticity: ads that constantly bemoan the notion of the sales pitch, heartfelt apologies that run on the evening news whenever another perpetrator of a large-scale bank fraud is captured and the very real possibility that our own financial worries will cease when we are made the stars of our own reality television programs."

http://www.truthout.org/authenticating-inauthentic59167

--------

Welcome To Fedville
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi167.html



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ron+Paul
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bernie+Sanders
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Federal+Reserve
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Wall+Street
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Big+Banks
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=banking+lobby
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=lobbyist
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=derivatives
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=slavery
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=taxpayer
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Greider
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Anne+Elizabeth+Moore
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/sardi
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Roger+Bybee
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Perry+Willis
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Garry+Reed