Grape Nuts and Hazardous Morals
by Kathleen Wallace Peine / October 31st, 2011
I love it when a protest has an appropriate backdrop, but the aesthetics aren’t always considered. How much better would OWS be if that damn bull statue could have somebody’s laundry drying off his tail? Occupy Everything.
And somehow it’s just not the same to see a small Bank of America ATM being occupied. I want drama and vigor, not $2 per transaction. The Kansas City Occupy group has the local branch of the Federal Reserve as a backdrop. Nice. The employees come and go, having to witness all of the occupying. I presume they drive beater cars from the 80s, a move implemented to make ex local chair Herman Cain feel at home, like he never left the pizza delivery business. That’s his legacy. Well. that and the mustachiod fellows lurking in front of brick walls. He leaves those guys in his wake wherever he goes.
It’s amazing how little is known about the Federal Reserve; that is, by the folks just trying to exist in the US. They wonder why their money seems to have a built-in inflationary ticking bomb. It seems like that because it does, courtesy of every bailout and every backroom secret deal presided over by The Fed and the accomplices in the Treasury Department.
But people really don’t know much at all about The Fed. I would not be shocked if a poll conducted by Fox News would indicate that we’re all real jerks for talking about this. But also the poll would find that practically nobody in America knows what the Fed even is. Animal, mineral, leech? Without a doubt, most people think it’s just another branch of the Federal government (you know, like the Post Office!).
Even politicians reveal their ignorance when they cry for the Fed Chairman to “be fired” in an attempt to blossom some populist creds. Maybe they know that they are mouthing nonsense since the guys are appointed for 4 year terms, not to be removed even for presiding over cataclysmic policy. Hell, Obama will even give you a second term for that sort of thing.
I won’t even try to delve into the devil detail nonsense that is the Federal Reserve. I’ve been plodding though “The Creature from Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin, and suffice it to say that an entity created on the sly by men too scared to use their last names during the train ride south to Georgia, who ultimately were headed for a secret island…oh and they had to use “new” servants shipped to said island so the regulars wouldn’t be recognized…well, it was probably not an up and up endeavor. More like a meeting of criminal gangs putting aside differences to ensure a flow of greenery.
The common reason given for The Fed’s creation was to respond to the “Panics” of the 1800s, but after reading about the burgeoning number of banks during the early 1900s, it sounds more likely that this was nothing but an improper cartel getting set up, one to favor the large boys over the upstarts. We’ve had some notable “panics”, a.k.a. Depressions and Recessions since their creation; they seem to have failed in their primary fake mandate.
The six men who attended the planning meeting were said to represent ¼ of the total wealth in the world, if you can wrap your head around that. Maybe laudanum would have been a better response to panic then to plunge forward with a plan from these guys.
The details are convoluted and difficult to unravel, just like the packaging of shit “assets” which, through the magic of Math, were weighted, valued and scrubbed until the core substance became another item. It’s always obscured by thick curtains until no daylight can come through. And then there’s the inevitable favorite stand-by excuse. “Just leave it to us, you wouldn’t understand this complexity. We are geniuses, goddammit.”
The basic identity of the Federal Reserve is not understood by Americans, that’s true, probably because it’s so damn bizarre — it not being Federal and having no Reserves. It has been pointed out by others even sillier than me that the Federal Reserve resembles Grape Nuts for those very reasons. An entity with a name that reflects not at all with what it is. I’d love to see one of those connection/association ACT type questions matching Grape Nuts and Federal Reserve. Can you recognize the similar traits of these word groupings?
It’s really no wonder that people don’t understand even the basics; it’s not like the commonly accessed news outlets would ever touch this.
When they do delve into financial chicanery, it is inevitably from the point of view of the guy who dropped the Rufie in the glass. One notable example being the nauseating Erin Burnett who now has her own Wall Street Variety Hour on CNN. She hit the ground running; one of her first pieces being “Seriously, OWS?”. She seriously ridiculed OWS in a manner as slanted as the asses these Wall Street guys sniff cocaine off of. Oh, sorry — was that biased on my part? My bias comes to you for free, though! Hers….? Who knows how much it costs. Indirectly, quite a bit for the average American, I’m guessing.
Burnett put forth the premise that TARP had been paid back for one thing. Once again, it’s so very complicated for us rabble, but Edward Griffin points out in the Jekyll Island book that these “paybacks” came from essentially insolvent entities, begging the question…..was this just another example of the Fed’s notorious “Don’t Get Audited, And Don’t Tell” largess? Where the hell could the money have come from? It’s hard to explain, and deliberately so. In one instance, initial bail-out money was paid back with secondary bail-out money. It’s all just ridiculous, looking under these curtains. But it works pretty well; the news readers declare the reality points that come off the fax for the day, then for good measure, ridicule someone for flair. It’s very distracting and seems to have worked well in the past.
Burnett is an especially egregious offender, her pedigree being that of a CNBC “babe” (and I’m not saying she isn’t pretty in that way that very plain girls who have money manage to achieve, and besides we’ve been told she’s lovely). I’m being catty because she started it. Seriously. She is about to marry a Wall Street Citigroup executive and presumably finds time for all of this when she’s not going to Council of Foreign Relations meetings (I’m not making that up). So, yeah, it’s not too shocking that there isn’t a lot of clarity in financial reporting of any kind. Who would have thought 15 years ago that we’d be going to Rolling Stone magazine for the most comprehensive looting coverage?
Then we hear a month or so ago that Fed wants to have an outreach education program for those who are discussing The Fed online. They want to “identify and reach out”. Crap, that means us, I’m thinking! Practice saying “Do it to Julia”…….. (Roberts, I hope). She shouldn’t have glorified hooking.
And neither should Erin Burnett for the financial industry.
Ba-dum-bump.
Kathleen Wallace Peine welcomes reader response. She can be reached at: kathypeine@gmail.com. Read other articles by Kathleen.
This article was posted on Monday, October 31st, 2011 at 8:01am and is filed under Disinformation, Finance, Media.
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