William R. Mann at Canada Free press writes:
February 24, 2010
That was then, this is then?
“I am more concerned about the return of my money than the return on my money.”—Mark Twain
I am no expert in economics, or the political and fiscal manipulations by the Federal Reserve, the US Treasurer, the Congress, or the Executive. But today, I was reading an article by analyst Thomas E. Woods, Jr. of the Von Mises Institute, entitled “The Great Gold Robbery of 1933,” when I developed that uneasy “uh-oh” feeling.
This article was written shortly before the Financial Crisis of September 2008 and before the enactment of the Troubled Asset Relief Program [TARP] legislation. As I read through this, I recalled all of the recent talk about the Glass-Steagall Act. I decided subsequently to do a simple search of the archives of Time.com.
But, before taking a trip down memory road to that thrilling yesteryear of 1933, let’s review the latest and biggest banking disaster in US History.
September 2008, in the heat of the Presidential Campaign, the crisis unfolds. America is informed by its leaders that emergency action must all of a sudden be taken to save the US and the World economy. Most Americans at that time were in the dark, in a fog, ill-informed, suspicious of, or plainly outraged by the rush-rush, hush-hush enactment of this legislation.
In retrospect it is easy to see why. They had good reason to be so. I first heard of this scheme on my car radio while on vacation in Oregon. But details were sparse and the few that there were, revealed very little. Remember how John McCain suspended his Campaign to return to Washington, but the “cool headed” Barack Obama did not? Remember how President Bush [not only a “lame duck” at the time, but more like a “dead duck”] told us that this proposed action went against every free market inclination that he had to approve of this action?
The overwhelming majority of Americans bought into the assertion, at least partially, that there was some sort of “crisis,” and that swift action was in order. But we were shocked at how fast, and with what overwhelming majorities in both chambers, Congress drafted and voted on this Bill. How could Congress do this? How could the Legislative Branch give the President [and the Federal Reserve] such sweeping “emergency powers?”
Now, in late February, 2010, Americans are increasingly shocked and dismayed over how TARP funds were dispersed and to whom they were dispersed. We are disappointed in the inefficiency in which almost a trillion dollars were appropriated to rescue banks who had squandered and abused the public trust. Worse yet, we are alarmed that the Obama Administration, instead of returning hundreds of billions in uncommitted TARP funds to the US Treasury, instead seeks to use these funds for further unworthy and failed Keynesian schemes to “stimulate” the US Economy. Perhaps worst of all, there are many indications and reports to be found in the alternative media that Congress was well aware of this impending crisis and held an extremely rare “Closed Door” session on March 13th, 2008 where they were informed that this train wreck was coming, and did nothing until September.
Mr. Thomas Woods offers a startling time line history of how Franklin Delano Roosevelt ruthlessly used his so-called “Emergency Powers” to deal with the first New Deal Act, “Emergency Item 1 -Banking Crisis” This act gave President Roosevelt sweeping executive powers to enact banking regulation and resulted in the abandonment of the Gold Standard for American Currency. Mind you, it appears that at that time during a serious recession, no one, Republican or Democrat, seriously questioned the vast expansion of executive powers. The following summary excerpts or quotes Mr. Woods article to summarize the Emergency Banking Act of 1933 [The Glass-Steagall Act]:
- It was passed by Congress on March 9, 1933 [with Republican support] unread, and virtually without debate. [1]
- The Act “retroactively approved the president’s closing of private banks throughout the country for several days the previous week, an act for which he had not bothered to provide a legal justification.” [Ibid]
- The Act “gave the secretary of the Treasury the power to require all individuals and corporations to hand over all their gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates if in his judgment such action is necessary to protect the currency system of the United States.” [Ibid]
- The Act was essentially an extension of the 1917 Trading with the Enemy act, “originally been intended to criminalize economic intercourse between American citizens and declared enemies of the United States.” The American People essentially became a criminal [enemy] if they did not hand over their gold and/or were caught hoarding. [Ibid]
- April 1933: “The president ordered all individuals and corporations in America to hand over their gold holdings to the federal government in exchange for an equivalent amount of paper currency… few saw anything amiss in this coerced transaction, and most trusted the government’s assurances that this was somehow necessary in order to combat the Depression. Only later would they discover that they weren’t getting that gold back, and that the paper dollars they were being given in exchange would be devalued.” [Ibid]
- “The Court never pronounced upon the constitutionality of the gold seizure the legality of which it simply took for granted.” [Ibid]
- “On June 5, 1933, at the behest of the president, Congress took the next step, passing a joint resolution making it illegal to “require payment in gold or a particular kind of coin or currency, or in an amount in money of the United States measured thereby.” [Ibid]
- “By the 1970s the federal government had once again permitted Americans to hold gold coins. But when it came time to actually mint them again, it made sure that gold coins could never circulate and displace the constantly depreciating paper currency printed by the US government: the law required that such coins could circulate with a face value only a tiny fraction of their market value.” [Ibid]
Hmmmm.
A blinding flash of the obvious? Was this “déjà vu all over again?”
Historical transcripts are an amazing thing. After reading Mr. Woods, I went to the archives of Time.com to see what they said about Glass-Steagall at the time. I was virtually agog as I read this excerpt from Time Magazine’s March 20, 1933 issue:
“After Speaker Rainey had sworn in the membership with one thunderous oath* and the President’s message had been read, the House plunged headlong into H. R. 1491, “an act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking.” So hastily had the bill been drawn up that no printed copies of it were yet available for members. Their only knowledge of what they were being asked to approve came from a clerk’s sing-song reading of the lone text which still bore last-minute corrections scribbled in pencil. Chairman Steagall of the yet unorganized Banking & Currency Committee arose to explain to his bewildered colleagues how H. R. 1491 gave dictatorial banking power to the President, authorized impounding of all gold, and provided for a new currency issue. Members were told that only by voting this measure could the nation’s banks open on the morrow. Exalted by his subject, Representative Steagall exclaimed:
‘It has taken 50 years to develop the great financial system of the U.S. which is now prostrate and in ruins. We cannot rebuild it in a day or a week. We can only do it step by step.
Heaven is not reached at a single bound;
But we build the ladder by which we rise
From the lowly earth to the vaulted skies
And we mount to its summit round by round.
The step we take leads upward toward the light. . . . The people have summoned a leader whose face is lifted toward the skies. We shall follow that leadership until we again stand in the glorious sunlight of prosperity and happiness.’ ‘’ [2]
“Precisely 38 minutes after it had taken up H. R. 1491 the House passed it with a unanimous roar. Trusting their new President to do right, members voted it blind, without a single word’s change. Under the Roosevelt spell the House’s deliberative session became a ratification meeting.” [Ibid]
“The Senate finally passed H. R. 1491 by a vote of 73-10-7, with no amendments. In seven hours and 51 minutes after it opened its special session Congress had sent President Roosevelt the first thing he had asked for—the largest grant of power over the U. S. pocketbook ever given in peacetime.” [Ibid]
FDR’s overwhelmingly Democrat Congress indeed seized this crisis and did not let it go to waste. The Republicans, in a tiny minority and “disgraced” went along with applause and little dissension. Sound familiar, anyone? The Progressive-Democrat Party has done their homework. Was TARP practice for how to ram through a Stimulus Bill? Was the Stimulus Bill practice for how to ram through National Healthcare? You be the judge.
Mr. Woods’ article concluded: “What this episode teaches us is not so much that we need to ‘return to the Constitution,’ though that would be an improvement over what we have now, but rather that pieces of paper that governments themselves interpret cannot be expected to prevent governments from doing what they think they can get away with.” [1]
So all of us, whether we invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, money markets, commodities, gold or other precious metals, or simply put or money into savings accounts, should take heed. Those who win wars write the history of that war and make the rules for the future world. Elections are no different.
Excerpted; read entire article HERE.
End Notes:
[1] Mises Daily, August 13 2008
[2] The Congress: The Congress Bank Bill, March 20, 1933
**Emboldened areas added for focal points**
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THEN ADD THIS:
Is the Obama Regime About to Confiscate Your Savings?
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet
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February 26, 2010
There is no question but that The Obama Regime has plans for your savings. Obama’s Treasury Department and even the Labor Department are already investigating “the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams.”
Ok, let me see if I can break it down for you.
What Obama is planning to do is: Take you savings, the money you have squirreled away for your retirement in 401-K’s and IRA’s, and hand you an IOU with which they will promise to pay you a small annuity each month of your retirement.
Got your attention yet?
I am not making this up! Businessweek magazine is reporting on it.
Don’t think they can do it? Does the government raiding the social security trust fund ring any bells? They took every dime of that money and left an IOU in its place.
Oh, they’re going a take your money. Make no mistake about that — and they intend to spend it, almost immediately, to try to offset the trillion dollar plus deficits, which will, of course, leave the government coffers empty again. So, then, YOU and I will be broke right along with our pathetic, hapless, government.
Now, they are not going to tell you that. In fact, they will probably tell you they will be investing your money in Treasury bonds, or some such.
There is some thought that the process will begin by the Treasury Department making it optional for you to purchase Treasury bonds with your retirement money. (Aren’t we free to buy Treasury bonds any time we want today?)
As I said above, I am not making this up! The House Education and Labor Committee met last fall and they focused on “redirecting (IRA and 401k) tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.”
It surely appears the Obama Regime is going to war against seniors in America. Why do I say THAT? Well, seniors have accumulated the most wealth in America, when you average it out, simply because they have been around the longest. When the left speaks of their attacks on the rich, they really mean attacks on the seniors of America.
What we are seeing, dear reader, is socialism in action. We have been telling you for months now that the current US Government IS a socialist government. Maybe you’ll believe it when your 401k and/or your IRA account is wiped out by the socialist Obama Regime.
Look, the Democrat/Socialist/Marxist/Progressive government of the US is looking for money anywhere they can find it. They know there are, very likely, multi-billions of dollars in 401k and IRA accounts owned by the citizens of the US. Do not kid yourself for one moment. They are going to seize that money.
“Oh, but they can’t do that,” you say. “That’s MY money. It is private property!” Well, normally, you would be right. That is to say, IF we had a government that recognized the US Constitution as anything but an outdated bunch of suggestions, you’d be right. Unfortunately, that is not the reality we live in today in America.
The democrats’ inspiration for this theft (call it anything you like, but it IS THEFT!) comes from the South American nation of Argentina. You see, back in 2008 Argentina nationalized the private retirement funds of their citizens on the grounds that “the private system never achieved what was needed.”
Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, is reported to have said the following: ” … the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”
Again, simply put – the US government is going to take our retirement money and make us a worthless promise to pay us some sort of monthly payment during our retirement years.
“House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created “guaranteed retirement accounts” for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return.” You may read the entire article
HERE.
There are some among us, even conservatives, who believe that confiscating the retirement money of America’s seniors is beyond the pale — even for the Obama Regime. I am not among them. I’d have to ask, if they were not considering it — then why do what they have already done? I refer you to a paragraph above in which we reported the following: “The House Education and Labor Committee met last fall and they focused on “redirecting (IRA and 401k) tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.” See what I mean? The Obama Regime is certainly exploring the possibility of doing just what we are warning you about today.
Read more: http://www.silentmajority09.com/2010/02/is-obama-regime-about-to-confiscate.html#ixzz0ge2sgTZS
**Emboldened areas added for focal points**
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Using Your Income Tax Refund to Save by Buying U.S. Savings Bonds
1. If I get a refund on my federal income tax return, can I direct the IRS, on my tax return, to help me save part or all of it by direct deposit?
Yes, you can. When you file your tax return, you can tell the IRS you want to save part or all of your refund and have the rest sent to your checking account. You can save part or all of your refund by submitting Form 8888, Direct Deposit of Refund to More Than One Account when you file your return. Follow the instructions on Form 8888 to tell the IRS to make a direct deposit of the amount you designate to an IRA, to buy U.S. savings bonds, or to a savings account or other savings vehicle.
2. If I want to use part or all of my refund to buy U.S. savings bonds, do I need to have previously set up an account with the Treasury Department?
No, you don’t need to open an account in advance with Treasury. Since the amount you request to buy in savings bonds must be in increments of $50, you will need to have a checking or savings account to which you can direct the IRS to deposit the remainder of your refund. For example, if your refund is $280, you can enter up to $250 on the appropriate line. The remaining $30 must be deposited to another financial account, such as your savings or checking account. Follow the instructions on IRS Form 8888, and after you file your tax return with this form, the IRS will arrange for your U.S. savings bonds to be mailed to you.
3. Is this new? Could a refund previously be used to buy U.S. savings bonds?
Yes, this option will be available for the first time starting in early 2010.
Further information can be found at: http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=217868,00.html
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My own end note here:
Hope for the best; PLAN for the worst.
