Toledo, Ohio: First Major U.S. City to be Owned by China?
Posted by Brittany Stepniak - Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
http://www.wealthwire.com/news/global/3419?r=1
http://www.wealthwire.com/news/global/3419?r=1
With our future generations at stake,
American leaders fear for the fate of our debt-ridden nation. Here's
further evidence that China truly is gaining momentum with their colonization of America.
China's investors are buying up an
astonishing amount of commercial real estate in Toledo, Ohio these days
as Chinese investors become increasingly wealthy while ours struggle to
sift for scraps. The problem at hand has put great pressure on various
states scattered across the U.S., threatened by Chinese dominance when
it comes to property ownership.
Large corporations controlled by the
Chinese government have already bought up tons of U.S. oil and gas
deposits, valued in the billions. And now they're stocking up on our
land too. New York City has been plagued by this dilemma as Chinese
investors have snagged luxury apartments and commercial properties in a
fury.
Now Toledo faces an uncertain future as
China prepares to design and develop a 200 acre “China city” only 40
minutes outside of Toledo...
A Chinese group
known as "Sino-Michigan Properties LLC" has bought up 200 acres of land
near the town of Milan, Michigan. Their plan is to construct a "China
City" with artificial lakes, a Chinese cultural center and hundreds of
housing units for Chinese citizens. Essentially, it would be a little
slice of communist China dropped right into the heartland of America.
This "China City" would be located about 40 minutes from both Detroit
and Toledo, and it would be marketed to Chinese business people that
want to start businesses in the United States.
Although Toledo is only the fourth
largest city in Ohio, it's a coveted location due to its location to two
major highways – I75 and I-80/90. The mayor of Toledo, Mike Bell told
the Toledo Blade that it was his “vision to make Toledo a true
international city.”
To make matters worse, the Fed has given Chinese banks the “okay” to start buying up American banks.
It's official: the trade deficit
situation – the root of a majority of our internal economic crisis – has
created an extreme imbalance of power between the U.S. and China.
The trade imbalance here in the States is
more than 5 times larger than any other country. To date, our nation
has a trade deficit of at least 8 trillion dollars since 1975.
China really is beginning to dominate,
whether Americans realize and accept it or not. Walk into any toy store,
department store, or your local Wal-Mart if you don't believe it. “Made
in China” labels undoubtedly cover the racks on the aisles throughout
those stores. They give us their goods, and we give them our money. They
get richer while we get poorer.
Just ten years ago, we ranked #1 in
average wealth per adult. Flash forward to 2010, and we had been kicked
back into a shameful 7th place.
Not to mention the jobs crisis at hand: we've lost at least 2.8 million jobs here in America; all because of the trade deficit.
China is selling their good to our
people, buying up our property, and even building our bridges. Where
does it stop? And what can we do to help stop it?
Unfortunately, the possibilities for
China to leave their mark over here seems endless right now while our
own potential for greatness is limited due to our financial restraints
due to a seemingly unfathomable debt.
With our eroding economy, we simply don't
have the money necessary to stop the Chinese colonization of America.
Will America soon be enslaved by China?
14 Reasons Why We Should Nationalize The Federal Reserve
Posted by Wealth Wire - Monday, November 7th, 2011
http://www.wealthwire.com/news/liberty/2176
One of the most important steps that we could take to bring
prosperity back to America would be to nationalize the Federal Reserve.
Doing so would allow the federal government to quit borrowing money,
dramatically reduce taxes and eventually pay off the entire U.S.
national debt. Instead of inheriting the largest debt in the history of
the world, future generations would actually have a chance at economic
prosperity because they would not be forced to pay off the horrific
debt of previous generations. The Federal Reserve is a perpetual debt
machine, it has almost completely destroyed the value of the U.S.
dollar and it has an absolutely nightmarish track record of
incompetence. There are no good reasons to keep the status quo. Our
current debt-based monetary system will inevitably lead to a complete
and total economic collapse. We desperately need to make a change
while we still can. As you will see below, there are a ton of good
reasons why we should nationalize the Federal Reserve.
Right now, most Americans believe that the Federal Reserve is
actually an agency of the federal government. But that is simply not
the case. The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as "federal"
as Federal Express is.
The Federal Reserve openly admits as much. For example, in defending
itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom
of Information Act, the Federal Reserve stated in court that it was "not an agency" of the U.S. government and therefore not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
So who owns the Federal Reserve?
As the Federal Reserve's own website describes, it is the member banks that own it....
The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation's central banking system, are organized much like private corporations--possibly leading to some confusion about "ownership." For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.
The debt-based monetary system established by the Federal Reserve has
greatly enriched the big banks and the people that own them. This has
been at the expense of the American people.
A private central bank should not issue our currency, set interest
rates and run our economy. Rather, we need to return control over the
currency to the American people where it belongs.
The following are 14 reasons why we should nationalize the Federal Reserve....
#1 The U.S. Constitution says that the federal government is the one that should be issuing our money.
In particular, according to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution,
it is the U.S. Congress that has been given the responsibility to
"coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix
the Standard of Weights and Measures".
#2 Our current debt-based monetary system is a
perpetual debt machine. It is absolutely imperative that we nationalize
the Federal Reserve and begin to issue debt-free money.
In a previous article about money and debt, I explained how more government debt is created whenever the U.S. government puts more money into circulation....
When the government wants more money, the U.S. government swaps U.S. Treasury bonds for "Federal Reserve notes", thus creating more government debt. Usually the money isn't even printed up - most of the time it is just electronically credited to the government. The Federal Reserve creates these "Federal Reserve notes" out of thin air. These Federal Reserve notes are backed by nothing and have no intrinsic value of their own.
This process creates a huge problem. When each new dollar is
created, the interest owed by the federal government on that new dollar
is not also created at the same time.
Therefore, more debt is actually created than the amount of money that the federal government receives from the Federal Reserve.
This is a Ponzi scheme that is designed to drain wealth from the American people and transfer it to the banking system.
This is why I call the Federal Reserve system a perpetual debt
machine. Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5,000 times larger
than it was 100 years ago.
Back in 1910, prior to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act, the national debt was only about $2.6 billion.
By going to a system of debt-free money, the U.S. government would never have to borrow a single dollar ever again.
#3 Our current debt-based monetary system requires
very high personal income taxes to pay for it. It is no accident that
the personal income tax was introduced at about the same time that the
Federal Reserve system came into existence.
If we nationalized the Federal Reserve and capped federal government
spending at a reasonable percentage of GDP, it would be entirely
possible to massively cut taxes and still keep our promises regarding
Social Security and other important social programs at the same time.
I believe that eventually the entire personal income tax system could
be completely wiped out and the IRS could be totally shut down. This
would save our economy billions upon billions of dollars in income tax
compliance costs.
However, as an initial first step, I believe that we should eliminate
all payroll taxes, all "self-employment taxes" and all taxes on the
first $100,000 earned by every American.
This would provide much needed relief to the millions of poor and
middle income families that have been hurt so badly by this economic
downturn.
Also, I believe that we could instantly reduce the corporate tax rate
to levels that would be competitive with the rest of the world, while
closing corporate tax loopholes at the same time. This would remove
the temptation for companies to leave the United States in order to
escape our brutally high corporate tax rates.
Yes, the proposals above would definitely cut taxes.
So where would we make up the difference?
Well, the U.S. Constitution provides one clue. According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, the U.S. Congress has the right to impose "duties, imposts and excises" on goods sold in this country.
For way too long, big corporations have been taking advantage of
sweatshops in the third world. For way too long, other nations have
used predatory trade practices to take unfair advantage of us. For way
too long, we have allowed nations with horrific human rights records to
ship their goods into our country for free.
Well, we need to bring that to an end. By raising tariffs we would
raise money for the federal government and we could potentially start to
reverse the flow of jobs and businesses that have been leaving this
country.
Access to the U.S. market is a privilege, not a right. High tariffs
would be imposed on goods from any country that allows slave labor
wages to be paid. Very high tariffs would be imposed on goods from any
country that is using predatory trade practices against us. Extremely
high tariffs would be imposed on any nation that does not respect
basic human rights.
However, please keep in mind that none of this would work if we did
not nationalize the Federal Reserve. The tax cuts proposed above would
be suicidal under our current debt-based monetary system. But if we
nationalize the Fed, we really could do this. It may sound crazy, but
it really would work.
#4 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, there
would be no more budget deficits. If the federal government was a bit
short one year, it would just print up a little bit of extra money in
order to make up the difference.
It would also be very important to cap federal government spending as
a percentage of GDP so that we don't have crazy Congress critters
creating a lot of inflation by spending us into oblivion.
Just because we would be adopting a debt-free monetary system does
not mean that we could throw spending discipline out the window.
Rather, it would actually become more important than ever.
#5 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, we would instantly reduce the national debt by 1.6 trillion dollars.
That is the amount that is currently on the balance sheet of the
Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve just created this money out of
thin air anyway, so it was never their money to begin with. Some
members of Congress have already proposed cancelling the debt held by
the Federal Reserve, and it is a great idea.
#6 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, we could eventually get rid of the entire national debt.
Under our current system, the U.S. national debt will never, ever be paid off. We are 15 trillion dollars in debt, and at this point we add more than a trillion dollars to that number every year.
As I have written about previously,
if the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S.
national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.
But under our current system we are not paying it off. Rather we keep piling up more debt at an astounding pace.
In a system of debt-free money, there would be no more budget
deficits, and we could actually start slowly paying off the national
debt with newly issued "United States money".
This would have to be done very slowly so as to not shock the
financial system, but it could be done. As U.S. debt becomes due, a
small percentage of it could be retired each year.
It is entirely conceivable that within 30 to 40 years we could pay it
off entirely without causing tremendous damage to the financial
system.
#7 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, we will
eventually totally eliminate the interest on the national debt. Most
Americans don't understand this, but each year we spend hundreds of
billions of dollars just on interest on the national debt. For example,
the U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars on interest on the national debt during fiscal year 2011.
Under a debt-free monetary system, that number would eventually go to
zero. That would save the federal government a ton of money.
#8 While there is certainly a danger that we would
have inflation under a debt-free monetary system, the reality is that we
are absolutely guaranteed inflation under the Federal Reserve system.
Most Americans believe that inflation is a fact of life, but the sad
truth is that the United States has only had a major, ongoing problem
with inflation since the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913.
If you do not believe this, just check out this chart.
Sadly, the U.S. dollar has lost well over 95 percent of its value since the Federal Reserve was created.
So, yes, there would be a need for monetary discipline under a
debt-free monetary system, but it would be hard to do worse than the
Federal Reserve has already been doing.
#9 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, we would
eliminate all of the financial bubbles that the Federal Reserve has been
creating.
For example, there would not have been such a bad housing crash if the Federal Reserve had not created such perfect conditions for a housing bubble in the first place.
We should eliminate the Federal Reserve and allow the market to set
interest rates. Having a central authority that sets interest rates is
just simply wrong and it creates all sorts of problems.
#10 The Federal Reserve has not been doing a good job.
In case anyone has not noticed, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has a very long track record of incompetence. Nearly every major judgment that he has made since taking over that position has been dead wrong.
We are always told that we need someone to run the economy and that the Fed is there to keep depressions from happening.
Well, the truth is that the Fed actually greatly contributed to the
Great Depression and it was at least partly responsible for the
financial crash of 2008.
Now we are right on the verge of yet another massive financial implosion.
If someone keeps wrecking your car, you don't let them keep driving it, do you?
#11 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, we could potentially transition to "sound money" at some point.
There is great debate about this of course. But it is a debate that we need to have.
But before we go to "hard money" we need to do something about this
horrific debt that we have piled up for future generations first. We
simply cannot lock this debt in and expect them to pay for our mistakes.
We made this mess, so we need to clean it up.
Going to a debt-free monetary system would allow us to do that.
#12 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, our local
banks will have much more freedom. Most Americans simply do not
understand just how much power the Federal Reserve actually has over our
local banks.
For example, just last year Federal Reserve officials walked into one bank in Oklahoma and demanded that they take down all the Bible verses and all the Christmas buttons that the bank had been displaying.
#13 If we nationalize the Federal Reserve, we won't
have trillions of dollars of secret loans being made to big financial
institutions on Wall Street and in foreign countries.
Most Americans don't realize this, but the Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their friends during the last financial crisis.
Meanwhile, hundreds of small banks were left out in the cold and the American people got no help.
This is rampant corruption and it needs to be stopped.
#14 The Federal Reserve needs to be nationalized
because it is an unelected, unaccountable "fourth branch of government"
that has gotten completely and totally out of control. Even some
members of Congress are now openly complaining about how much power the
Fed has. For example, Ron Paul told MSNBC last year that he believes
that the Federal Reserve is now more powerful than Congress.....
"The regulations should be on the Federal Reserve. We should have transparency of the Federal Reserve. They can create trillions of dollars to bail out their friends, and we don’t even have any transparency of this. They’re more powerful than the Congress."
To learn much more about the Federal Reserve and how it is destroying
prosperity in America, there is a great animated documentary on
YouTube entitled "The American Dream" that you can watch right here.
It is absolutely imperative that the American people get educated
about the Federal Reserve and about why a debt-based monetary system is
bad for us.
In 1922, Henry Ford wrote the following....
"The people must be helped to think naturally about money. They must be told what it is, and what makes it money, and what are the possible tricks of the present system which put nations and peoples under control of the few."
The U.S. government does not need to go into debt to anyone.
The U.S. government is a sovereign nation.
So why in the world are we 15 trillion dollars in debt?
We have allowed ourselves to become willingly enslaved.
In the book of Proverbs, it tells us the following....
The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
By allowing ourselves to become enslaved to debt, we have become the servants of the international banking system.
Our founding fathers attempted to warn us about this.
For example, Thomas Jefferson strongly believed that when the federal
government borrows money in one generation which must be paid back by
future generations it is equivalent to stealing....
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Not only that, Thomas Jefferson also once stated that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing....
If we had implemented that advice, how much better off would we be today?I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.
We can still do this.
We can take back control of our financial system.
We can nationalize the Federal Reserve.
We can dramatically cut taxes and eventually shut down the IRS.
We can give our children and grandchildren a future that is debt free.
We can escape the tyranny of the international bankers.
The choice, America, is up to you.
*Post courtesy of The Economic Collapse.
The Giant Federal Reserve Scam That Most Americans Do Not Understand
Posted by Wealth Wire - Wednesday, June 27th, 2012
http://www.wealthwire.com/news/finance/3423?r=1
How is money created? If you ask average people on the street this question, most of them have absolutely no idea.
This is rather odd, because we all use money constantly. You would
think that it would only be natural for all of us to know where it comes
from. So where does money come from? A lot of people assume that the
federal government creates our money, but that is not the case. If the
federal government could just print and spend more money whenever it
wanted to, our national debt would be zero.
But instead, our national debt is now nearly 16 trillion dollars.
So why does our government (or any sovereign government for that
matter) have to borrow money from anybody? That is a very good question.
The truth is that in theory the U.S. government does not have to borrow
a single penny from anyone. But under the Federal Reserve system, the
U.S. government has purposely allowed itself to be subjugated to a
financial system in which it will be constantly borrowing larger and
larger amounts of money. In fact, this is how it works in the vast
majority of the countries on the planet at this point. As you will see,
this kind of system is not sustainable and the structural problems
caused by such a system are at the very heart of our debt problems
today.
So where does money come from? In the United States, it comes from the Federal Reserve.
When the U.S. government decides that it wants to spend another
billion dollars that it does not have, it does not print up a billion
dollars.
Rather, the U.S. government creates a bunch of U.S. Treasury bonds (debt) and takes them over to the Federal Reserve.
The Federal Reserve creates a billion dollars out of thin air and exchanges them for the U.S. Treasury bonds.
So why does the U.S. government go to all this trouble? Why doesn't the U.S. government create the money itself?
Those are very good questions.
One of the primary reasons why our system is structured this way is
so that wealthy people can get even wealthier by lending money to the
U.S. government and other national governments.
For example, last year the U.S. government spent more than 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt.
Over the centuries, the ultra-wealthy have found lending to national governments to be a very, very profitable enterprise.
The U.S. Treasury bonds that the Federal Reserve receives in exchange
for the money it has created out of nothing are auctioned off through
the Federal Reserve system.
But wait.
There is a problem.
Because the U.S. government must pay interest on the Treasury bonds,
the amount of debt that has been created by this transaction is greater
than the amount of money that has been created.
So where will the U.S. government get the money to pay that debt?
Well, the theory is that we can get money to circulate through the
economy really, really fast and tax it at a high enough rate that the
government will be able to collect enough taxes to pay the debt.
But that never actually happens, does it?
And the creators of the Federal Reserve understood this as well. They
understood that the U.S. government would not have enough money to both
run the government and service the national debt. They knew that the
U.S. government would have to keep borrowing even more money in an
attempt to keep up with the game.
That is why I call the Federal Reserve a perpetual debt machine.
The Federal Reserve was created to trap the U.S. government in an
endlessly expanding debt spiral from which there is no escape.
And the Federal Reserve is doing a great job at what it was designed
to do. Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than
it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
Another way that money comes into existence in our economy is through the process of fractional reserve banking.
I originally pulled the following simplified explanation of fractional reserve banking off of the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,
but it has been pulled down since then. But I still think it is helpful
in understanding the basics of how fractional reserve banking works....
"If the reserve requirement is 10%, for example, a bank that receives
a $100 deposit may lend out $90 of that deposit. If the borrower then
writes a check to someone who deposits the $90, the bank receiving that
deposit can lend out $81. As the process continues, the banking system
can expand the initial deposit of $100 into a maximum of $1,000 of
money ($100+$90+81+$72.90+...=$1,000)."
When you put your money into the bank, it does not say there. The
bank only keeps a relatively small amount of money sitting around to
satisfy the withdrawal demands of account holders. If all of us went
down to the banks right now and demanded our money, that would create a
major problem.
If I put 100 dollars into the bank and the bank lends out 90 of those
dollars to you, now it looks like there are 190 dollars floating
around. I have "100 dollars" in my bank account and you have "90
dollars" that you just borrowed.
The new debt that you have taken on (90 dollars) has "created" more
money. But of course you are going to end up paying back more than 90
dollars to the bank, so more debt has been created than the amount of
money that has been created.
And that is one of the big problems with our financial system. It is
designed so that the amount of debt and the amount of money are supposed
to be perpetually expanding, and the amount of debt created is always greater than the amount of money that is created.
So is it any wonder that our society is swamped with nearly 55 trillion dollars of total debt at this point?
A debt-based financial system is unsustainable by nature because it will always create debt bubbles that will inevitably burst.
Are you starting to see why so many Americans are saying that we need to abolish the Federal Reserve system?
Our founding fathers never intended for our financial system to work this way.
According to Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution,
the U.S. Congress is supposed to have the authority to "coin Money,
regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of
Weights and Measures".
So why has this authority been given to a private institution that is
dominated by the big Wall Street banks and that has actually argued in
court that it is "not an agency" of the federal government?
Thomas Jefferson once said that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a ban on all government borrowing....
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our
Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the
reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine
principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking
from the federal government the power of borrowing.
But instead, we have become enslaved to a system where government borrowing actually creates our money.
The borrower is the servant of the lender, and we have allowed our
government to enslave us to the tune of nearly 16 trillion dollars.
There are alternatives to this system. Things do not have to work this way.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians consider the
Federal Reserve to be good for America and steadfastly refuse to do
anything to change the status quo.
So if you are waiting for "solutions" to these problems on the national level you are going to be waiting for a very long time.
The debt problems that the United States and Europe are experiencing
did not come into existence by accident. They are the result of
fundamental structural problems with the financial system.
A debt-based financial system is always going to fail in the long
run. Unfortunately, most Americans still do not understand this and so
we will all get to suffer the consequences.
*Post courtesy of the Economic Collapse Blog.
![[Gambar: i5003_3078p112276.jpg]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_u8YzaLf2okNNZ1NeBrmjqCwQ3dhYzf2Pr7g8tvfQK5YK4bm50Lgd4i_ZpOitJAlQNeI8GJUSvzA2jiSBvrFRl8XK72Ofn-WDhjV7vNFzfHNYAVd7rD_YGtQvYzVvHm5Rm7T2yTTty3bOo=s0-d)
![[Gambar: 71299408eu4.png]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uO0elTM-Sa8XH-kW3UCJC7eMWFh60bwLO0Ah8Sv9oTScUNLX3YuMnuCg8zPOMfKYjRVLChUGNZ73-ZWyilLLtQrVlBMgdFghsaRu8Q4BwMuW2ng1J6ccDIBQ=s0-d)
