The Shocking Truth About America...A Third World Country

Image via Wikipedia

• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn half of our national income, while the bottom 90% collectively own less than 2 percent of the nation's wealth. There is more income inequality in America than at any time since 1928, when this statistic was first kept.

• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which is up from 49% in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
  
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line, which is the highest rate in 20 years.
  
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income since 1975 to match the rise in housing costs.
  
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of just the top 1% of Americans. And the top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

 Above from Leo Hindery, Jr.

Chairman, U.S. Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation
as published in The Huffington Post, Third World America: America's New Must-Read. (Image from Wikipedia added by BO666)

 In my previous post, I referred to our country as a two class society, "the haves" and "the have nots".  Arianna Huffington in her new book - Third World America - makes a valid statement to support this as reported by Mr. Hindery, who also agrees with her assessment.

Ms. Huffington has precisely described the current sad state of the middle class, with especially sharp perspective on what she calls the economic "nightmare on Main Street." And she offers particular insight into "America the dilapidated", her short-hand way of expressing her distress at the sorry state of the nation's infrastructure, which will require a staggering $3 trillion or so of capital expenditures to fix and upgrade.(emphasis added by BO666)

 Yes, when she calls this an "economic nightmare on Main Street" she hits the nail squarely on the head.  For the past 3 years I have been calling this an "economic disaster" which seems to flourish with each failed attempt to correct it.  The question then remains, are "they" really trying to correct it or further the benefits and holdings of the top 1% who, as stated above own:

83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of just the top 1% of Americans. And the top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.

Even more shocking is the fact - again stated above - that 90% of Americans collectively own only 2% of the nations wealth.  What's wrong with this picture?

We, the collective 90% of Americans have been robbed, stripped of any wealth we once possessed and are kept in distress never again to rise as the vibrant middle class we once were.

Does this remind anyone of any other regimes in other countries through out our most recent history?  Does this sound like the old Soviet Union?  Yes, in fact a visiting professor back in 1964 (a sitting U.S. Senator at the time) lectured our class on how close our country (then) was to the Soviet Union in terms of repression of people economically.  That was shocking and alarming to me then but wait, look at us now. 

Unfortunately, many of our younger generations do not remember the old Soviet Union and the political and economic repression they created in much of Europe.  In fact, today's Freshman College class (class of 2014) don't know anything of the Soviet Union.  It did not exist in their lifetime.  They know only that the Russians and Americans share space on the International Space station, work cooperatively on the space effort and see many wealthy Russians here in the U.S. as well as in Russia.

These same kids never new of East and West German, the wall dividing East and West Berlin and how different the economic lifestyles of the split nation were.

But one thing for sure.  These same Freshmen will remember how their parents lives were thrown into turmoil.  How many of their homes were foreclosed on.  They will remember the stress and misery that existed in their once happy homes when one or both parents lost their jobs and struggled just to survive and feed their family.  They will remember their once middle class lives deteriorated into seeking social services, receiving food stams, waiting in line at food banks and no longer enjoying the many things they once took for granted.

They will certainly remember the difficulties in paying for their college educations as student loans are limited and parents savings wiped out.  Some will make it and for those who try and can't, well, they may emerge as our best spokespersons and politicans as well as corporate executives.  .

The light at the end of the tunnel is that this current generation of politicians and corporate thieves will one day be replaced by these youngsters as they struggle to get through college and graduate.  These kids are our future and our last hope as our current group of crimeoliticians continue to ravage and destroy our country.

Arianna Huffington is right  This is a Third World Country and few have the guts to announce it publicly as she is doing through her book and as Leo Hindery, Jr. is doing through his article.

We must rid ourselves of the same old revolving door in Washington.  We must remove the likes of people like Greenspan, Bernanke, Geithner, Paulson, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush and yes, even Obama who promised change and that is what we are getting "pocket change".

Read all of Hindery's article...click here

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The Story of the Too Big To Fail

Inside boardrooms during the crash 

Stuart Washington
The Sydney Morning Herald

The top-ranked baboons within the storied US investment banks mark their territory loudly and clearly in an encyclopaedic account of the financial crash that engulfed the world in 2008.

Andrew Ross Sorkin is a not-so-archetypal mild-mannered New York Times reporter who has pieced together the boardroom events as the world raced to the brink of financial catastrophe.

In his book Too Big to Fail he has used a considerable contact book to recreate a word-by-word account of many, many meetings among those attempting to save Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros, American International Group and many others.

Central figures include the then treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, and the then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Timothy Geithner, later to succeed Paulson when the Obama administration took over.

This is a good article and the book referred to in the piece Too Big Too Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin should also be a good read.  I have not read it yet but it is on my calendar today to obtain.

Other News Links 
Lack of Jobs, Foreclosures May Keep Housing in US Depressed
Bloomberg
Who's really to blame for the economy
Christian Science Monitor (blog)

Goldman Sachs Senate Hearings and SEC Law Suit

For the latest news and information on Goldman Sachs, the historic SEC lawsuit against them for fraud and the Senate Hearings held Tuesday go to www.GloldmanSachs666.com.

My comments and opinions appear in my column  - Larry's Corner.

The truth behind the housing bubble, the ensung meltdown add the economic crisis here and abroad is beginning to rear its ugly head.  Our goal here of exposing the truth and the guilty could be happening.  However, it still needs the support of the population to force the truth.  Government may not want it to surface.

Goldman Charged By SEC With FRAUD

 VISIT www.GoldmanSachs666.com daily for updates to this story.

Wall Street Journal's MarketWatch says GoldmanSachs666 is one of ten Wall Street blogs You Must Bookmark Now.

The news broke late Friday afternoon. The SEC charged Goldman Sachs with Fraud. A civil not criminal case that may never see the inside of a court room but the opening of a very large door.

This is major news and the beginning of some justice that this blog and I have been asking for for three years now.

Yes, I have been talking and attempting to expose the crimes of Wall Street and major Banks like WAMU, BofA, Wells Fargo, Wachovia, Countrywide. Yes, I have said that Merill Lynch, Bear Stearns and Lehman were the primary causes of the initial so called mortgage meltdown and the ensuing world wide economic collapse. Yes, I have implicated Goldman Sachs and even called them the ringleaders of this cartel. But, with all the verifications of wrong doing over the past three years, no one in our government - Federal or State - nor our lawmakers and regulators have seen fit to take any positive action.

Indeed, many have gone to jail for fraud, specifically mortgage fraud but those are what I refer to as the "street pushers". The major suppliers - the Drug Lords- go unnamed and unpunished.

This action by the SEC - a coming out if you will - should open the flood gates of more investigations and charges criminally for all of those implicated in what I also call The Greatest Fraud In The History Of The World.

This is an important first step towards justice even though this action in itself will prove to be of little consequence. Yes, there will be a fine settled out of court as the likelihood of a trial is minimal in these cases.

But it is a first step. The UK and Germany are already calling for investigations in their countries of Goldman Sachs and I would bet those investigations will open a Pandora's Box in terms of the involvement of banks such as Deutsche Bank, USP and others.

This story will go on for many months if not years but it is a beginning to the justice I have been calling for and possibly a vindication - albeit too late - for the mortgage broker industry who took all the blame directly from all of those that were the cause - Wall Street Bankers.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS BREAKING STORY, PLEASE BOOKMARK MY SISTER SITE: www.GoldmanSachs666.com where you will find all the news links, commentary, videos and other stories on this BREAKING NEWS.

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Financial Crisis Hearings Are A Waste of Time

We have a new four letter commisson, the FCIC which stands for the Financial Crisis Investigation Commission.  Got it?  They are going to investigate the financial institutions and Wall Street.  Isn't that the job of law enforcement or more specifically the U.S. Attorney General's office along with the FBI?  I would think so if there were a real earnest effort to expose the multitude of crimes committed by those in some of our regulatory agencies, our Federal Reserve, some elements of the Presidents Cabinet (both past and present), Congress and perhaps even our previous Vice President.

One of my more favorite reporters, Paul Muolo, who writes for National Mortgage News and has authored several books on the banking crisis, recently wrote and asked the same questino in his recent weekly feature, "What We're Hearing".  Here is the excerpt from his column.

COMMENTARY: I'm starting to wonder whether these financial crisis hearings are turning out to be a total waste of time (and taxpayer money). The commission is calling witnesses (players in the crisis) to testify about how they screwed up. It's been almost two years now and these "players" (Dan Mudd, Charles Prince and regulator Jim Lockhart) have had plenty of time to come up with rationalizations about what went wrong. Rob Levin, a former executive at Fannie Mae, told the panel that the success of the private-label MBS market "threatened" the GSE and drove it into the arms of the alt-A market. In other words, if they didn't buy this crap their seller/servicers would've bolted for Wall Street. (Gee, that would've been awful.) And then Lockhart said FanFred encouraged poor underwriting standards by not aggressively forcing their seller/servicers to repurchase bad loans. (Note: FanFred certainly are not shy about buybacks now.) OK, if things were so bad, why did Lockhart, in the summer of 2008, say there would be no takeover of FanFred? What we're lacking in this crisis is a Washington hero, a regulator like Ed Gray (of the S&L crisis) who should have stood up to the power elite (in this case, FanFed, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street) and laid down the law or at least spilled his guts to the press. But we had none of this. In seems the days of Washington regulators having the guts to leak information to the press (ala the Pentagon Papers or Watergate) are long gone. I guess these government bureaucrats are too concerned about keeping their jobs or securing for themselves a golden parachute in the private sector. But make no mistake about it: we in the press don't break into offices and steal documents (e-mails). Someone needs to leak it to us. Feel free to leak away in the future and send me some confidential emails, a bank examination report, anything. Am I begging? OK. If you're concerned about being detected, mail it to me at 4401 Wilson Blvd./Suite 910/Arlington, VA 22203. (P.S. Don't waste my time with "imagined" crimes)...

It is funny that I wrote about the suspicious activity by Fannie/Freddie - Paul refers to them as FanFred - almost three years ago.  Back then everyone was saying and accusing mortgage brokers of "peddling" that terrible sub prime product.  If the industry had stayed to the FanFred programs - it was said - the country would not have been in the cirisis. 

Wrong, I was trying to tell everyone.  Fannie and Freddie were as involved in creating the mortgage meltdown and the ensuing economic crisis as were the other banksters on Wall Street.  Even then corruption was rampant at FanFred and when they were caught "cooking the books" they got a slap on the wrist and it was business as usual.  In other words "see no eveil, hear no evil speak no evil" but if evil rears its ugly head then just brush it under the rug so it can continue to fester but just out os sight.

This is waht this FCIC thing is all about.  The evil has surfaced.  Wow, we have been hearing about it for two years now in Congressional hearing after Congressonal hearing as well as on major television news and in major newspapers around the world. 

The FBI in 2007 said they were "investigating" 18 banks but to this day they never disclosed who they were and what the results were.  Maybe because the crooked banks were quickly absorbed into other crooked banks, making them Too Big To Fail thus Too Big to Touch.

The crime here is not the crimes that were committed by the banks, government, politicians et al, the crime here is the coverup of the greatest ponzi scheme and scam ever perpetrated on the people of the world.  It is the greatest cover up in the history of mankind and I fear the truth will not surface for perhaps a hundred years or more.

Please see my Feature column - Larry's Corner - included in my Daily News Links column at www.GoldmanSachs666.com.

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Break Up The Too Big Too Fail Banks

I have been preaching this sermon as has Sheila Bair, Chair of the FDIC. Now a former IMF
economist says the same. I know my opinion doesn't count for much but his should as should
Ms. Bair's.

Economist Johnson urges breakup of big U.S. banks(Reuters) - America's big banks must be broken up and their risk-taking curtailed or the world's richest economy will face another massive financial crisis, former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson says in a new book.

n "13 Bankers, The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown," published on Tuesday, Johnson and his co-author James Kwak describe Wall Street as an oligarchy holding the country hostage to its risk-taking.

According to Johnson, when the financial crisis hit in 2008 and 2009 and the banking system was rescued with a government bailout, Washington made a crucial misstep.

"The process of saving them ... has allowed them to build themselves up so that their balance sheets are now bigger than they were before the crisis. That doesn't make any sense, the too big to fail problem has become worse."

"The crisis exacerbated the problem by allowing the largest banks to get bigger at precisely the moment that the government should have been doing everything in its power to make them smaller," Johnson told Reuters in an interview.

Now the six biggest banks are even bigger than they were in 2008, which means that unless there is significant reform of the financial system it is only a matter of time before there is another financial system collapse, the book contends.

Read the full article...click here

We as a nation are being manipulated, used and enslaved.  Only the elite class will survive as most of what is being done - legislation, laws, rules and new agencies - are all for the purpose of creating a nation of "economic slaves" where the ruling "elite" hae and control everything.

Don't be fooled.  Listen to our new jargon - Homeland Security, New World Order, Patriot Act, Too Big Too Fail, Bailout and more.  All words that are made to sound democratic in a free society but words that actually mask the dark side of the truth that is rearing its ugly head.  

Doesn't anyone wonder why some things never change from administration to administration and from Republican to Democrat control?  Why you must ask, is everything always the same when they should be different?

Why did Obama follow the same "bailout" road that his totally different predecessor was on?  Why are some members of the cabinet from different political parties but from the same fraternities?  Why are so many Presidential advisers recycled from administration to administration?  

To regain our democratic control and reinstate all of our constitutional rights we must start with the break up of these banks (monopolies) which in turn would diminish the role and power of The Fed - which must also go.

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Former IRS Agent Speaks Out on "Restore The Republic"

 This is a MUST SEE video for all who want to restore the freedom in our Republic.  Our system is broken and we, the people, are being violated.  Watch, listen and comment if you dare.  Unfortunately I cannot embed it but the link is below.

http://RealityReport.TV | http://RestoreTheRepublic.com | 

In this edition of the Reality Report former IRS Special Agent Joseph Banister joins Gary to weigh in on Joseph Stack's attack on the IRS building in Austin. Franchi also presents stories on Citigroup's recent bank run prevention plan and Ron Paul's recent straw poll victory at CPAC. We also unspin ABC's attempts at demonizing patriots, expose CNN's simulation, present Utah's recent legislative action against the Federal Government and spot light on Glenn Beck's ratings drop. Gary brands a new "Enemy of the State" and reads from the mailbag.

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