corporations

We Don’t Know How Bad Secret Obama Trade Deal Really Is [Video]

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corporationsGreg Hunter – Attorney and public banking expert Ellen Brown says the recent Obama trade deal is bad news.  Brown contends, “We don’t even know how bad it is.  All we know we got out of WikiLeaks.  It’s all secret.  They are negotiating what would be called a treaty which should require a two-thirds vote under the Constitution.  They are negotiating it for “fast-track” and it is completely secret. . . .

These documents are supposed to be kept classified for four years after this thing passes.  How is that even possible?  There are two other agreements that are coming down the pipe that are also covered by “fast-track,” which means they go directly to an up or down vote.  Only get a brief time to look at it.  They don’t get to use filibusters.  They don’t get to debate.

[youtube=https://youtu.be/diRUQBckMn8]

Besides the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership) which is bad enough because what we know of it is horrible, there is the Trans-Atlantic Agreement which is similar to the TPP with Pacific Rim countries.  There’s another one that we only just heard about which is the TiSA, which is the Trade in Services Agreement.  This covers 80% of the American economy and all sorts of services, including financial services, which means banking.  So, we can’t regulate banking anymore, and that is basically what it means.” Continue reading →

Trade Treaties, Mega-Corporations, And Worldwide Socialism

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“The ever-emerging popular image of socialism: a humane government colossus controls the means of production for the benefit of the people; and share-the-wealth at all levels of society comes alive. This is political theory for children in a condition of arrested development—for example, college students and Hollywood actors who long for lunch at the White House.” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

government Jon Rappoport – I use the loaded word “socialism” in the headline, because it’s important to understand that Globalism is a form of socialism.

That may not sit well with some people, because they believe in the socialism team and they think that team is against Globalism. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s about time they woke up.

Globalism was born out of the triumphs of cutthroat capitalists like Rockefeller, and out of the triumphs of international bankers like Rothschild and Warburg. These men made a decision quite natural for them: “By hook and by crook I’ve acquired my fortune; now I want a monopoly; I want to cut out the competition; I want empire; therefore, I have to control governments; I want to make governments more powerful, so by controlling them I control society.”

What better way to make governments more powerful than by forming a long-term (criminal) collaboration with mega-corporations, including major banks?

Governments plus giant corporations. Does that equal socialism?

You can quibble and say the corporations are really in charge and therefore this arrangement isn’t socialism. Call it oligarchy. Call it runaway capitalism or the corporate state.

The collaboration among governments, mega-corporations, and bankers is the triangle. It’s the engine of control. It grossly limits freedom. It claims, through propaganda, that its “government wing” is for the people. That’s utter nonsense, of course.

Today’s socialists believe government is the answer to the control of society by big money and big greed. That’s a delusion. The governments are on the side of big money.

Socialists also like to say that governments are weak sisters in the pocket of the corporations, and therefore the governments must become stronger. Another dangerous fantasy.

The last time I looked at America, for example, the government had an extensive military, a dizzying number of spying agencies, and a gigantic Justice Department that could make arrests and put criminals on trial. If that’s weak, what’s strong?

Who are the major money men of Wall Street the US government has thrown in prison? Who are the mega-corporate thugs the government has sent away for life terms?

The government is firmly in bed with the corporations. Committed. Purposefully. Continue reading →

Rule By The Corporations

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corporationsPaul Craig Roberts – The Transatlantic and Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnerships have nothing to do with free trade. “Free trade” is used as a disguise to hide the power these agreements give to corporations to use law suits to overturn sovereign laws of nations that regulate pollution, food safety, GMOs, and minimum wages.

The first thing to understand is that these so-called “partnerships” are not laws written by Congress. The US Constitution gives Congress the authority to legislate, but these laws are being written without the participation of Congress. The laws are being written by corporations solely in the interest of their power and profit. The office of US Trade Representative was created in order to permit corporations to write law that serves only their interests. This fraud on the Constitution and the people is covered up by calling trade laws “treaties.”

Indeed, Congress is not even permitted to know what is in the laws and is limited to the ability to accept or refuse what is handed to Congress for a vote. Normally, Congress accepts, because “so much work has been done” and “free trade will benefit us all.”

The presstitutes have diverted attention from the content of the laws to “fast track.” When Congress votes “fast track,” it means Congress accepts that corporations can write the trade laws without the participation of Congress. Even criticisms of the “partnerships” are a smoke screen. Countries accused of slave labor could be excluded but won’t be. Super patriots complain that US sovereignty is violated by “foreign interests,” but US sovereignty is violated by US corporations. Others claim yet more US jobs will be offshored. In actual fact, the “partnerships” are unnecessary to advance the loss of American jobs as there is nothing that inhibits jobs offshoring now.

What the “partnerships” do is to make private corporations immune to the laws of sovereign countries on the grounds that laws of countries adversely impact corporate profits and constitute “restraint of trade.” Continue reading →

Why Public Banks Outperform Private Banks: Unfair Competition Or A Better Mousetrap?

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Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP] language would authorize “Corporations . . . to sue governments that passed laws protecting their people from corporate damage, on the ground that the laws impair corporate profits. The trade agreements put corporations before governments and the people they represent.”  – E Brown

EllenBrown2Public banks in North Dakota, Germany and Switzerland have been shown to outperform their private counterparts. International private competitors have responded by pushing for regulations limiting the advantages of the public banking model, but public banking advocates are pushing back.

In November 2014, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Bank of North Dakota (BND), the nation’s only state-owned bank, “is more profitable than Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has a better credit rating than J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and hasn’t seen profit growth drop since 2003.” The article credited the shale oil boom; but as discussed earlier here, North Dakota was already reporting record profits in the spring of 2009, when every other state was in the red and the oil boom had not yet hit. The later increase in state deposits cannot explain the bank’s stellar record either.

Then what does explain it? The BND turns a tidy profit year after year because it has substantially lower costs and risks then private commercial banks. It has no exorbitantly-paid executives; pays no bonuses, fees, or commissions; has no private shareholders; and has low borrowing costs. It does not need to advertise for depositors (it has a captive deposit base in the state itself) or for borrowers (it is a wholesome wholesale bank that partners with local banks that have located borrowers). The BND also has no losses from derivative trades gone wrong. It engages in old-fashioned conservative banking and does not speculate in derivatives. Continue reading →