We all know that the US Federal Reserve Board created immense amounts of money to bail out banks and financial institutions during the global financial crisis that began in Autumn, 2008 and which continues to this day. Now we have been given a glimpse of just how many trillions of dollars the Fed created to bail out the biggest banks and many other entities as well. The first link below, from the New Zealand media, has some mind-numbing statistics about just how much money the Fed actually created, but even the information in the link gives no overall total of how much money the Fed magically “lent” into existence. The only mention in the US media that I saw about this surprising revelation was a mere one-paragraph story in the USA Today in its December 2nd issue. A reader did send me the second link, which contains a story on this subject from the Washington Post, but that article doesn’t report anywhere near the total trillions of dollars loaned into existence by the Fed as the first link reports.
According to the first link, the Fed lent $2.2 trillion to Citigroup, $2.1 trillion to Merrill Lynch, $2 trillion to Morgan Stanley, almost $1 trillion to Bear Stearns, $887 billion to Bank of America (the USA Today said Bank of America received $1.1 trillion), $620 billion to Goldman Sachs, $178 billion to JP Morgan Chase and $154 billion to Wells Fargo. This adds up to about $9 trillion that the US Fed created out of thin air to loan to just 9 big banks and financial institutions (some of which failed or were merged out of independent existence anyway). However, that may only be the tip of the iceberg. How many other banks received more cumulative trillions of dollars created out of thin air by the Fed?
Both the first link and the USA Today reported that the Fed also gave large amounts of money to foreign banks as well as American banks. The first link reports that Swiss Bank UBS received $165 billion, Deutsche Bank received $97 billion and the Royal Bank of Scotland received $67 billion. The USA Today adds the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan also received Fed hand-outs, but the amounts were not reported. The first link states: “Among the largest recipients were foreign central banks, such as the European Central Bank, Bank of England and Bank of Japan (emphasis added).” What the article meant by “the largest recipients” isn’t defined. Did they mean they were the largest foreign recipients of magical money from the Fed or that they received even larger amounts of money that the $9 trillion received by the large US banks first mentioned above? That’s not clear. However, the first link adds that these foreign Central banks “borrowed huge amounts from the Fed to assist their own banks (emphasis added).” In other words, the Fed lent undefined “huge” amounts of magic money to foreign central banks to bail out an unknown number of banks in foreign nations. The amount of money lent to foreign central banks is not known. Apparently, the Fed bailed out the entire global banking system with money created from fantasyland.
It gets even worse. Details of transactions released by the Fed account for only a fraction of the trillions specified above so much of the above money-creation is still veiled in secrecy. The true largesse of the Fed is almost beyond belief. The article reveals that even private companies and entities such as General Electric, Harley-Davidson, the California State Teachers Retirement System, the city of Bristol General City Retirement Fund and a group of Caterpillar dealers also borrowed aggregate more billions from the Fed. Who else borrowed money from the Fed without being named?
It is vital to realize that none of the incomprehensible trillions of dollars lent by the Fed actually existed as real money before it was “lent into existence.” As a layman, the only way I can understand this “monetary policy” is that the Fed created many trillions of fantasy money and then everyone agreed to pretend it was all “real” money once the recipients got their hands on it. The American people are largely clueless re: what is going on in their nation.
There are many questions that need answering. Was the Fed bailing out the money system to prevent a monetary seizure or was it bailing out big banks from their failed derivatives positions or a combination of both? Just how many trillions of dollars did the Fed magically “create?” Was the Fed bailing out reckless banking activities or was it also bailing out (and hiding) corrupt banking activities? How many of these loans are still outstanding? Who is on the hook for the loans that go bad and never get repaid? [It shouldn’t be the USA or its taxpayers who had no “say” in this unprecedented largesse.] If anyone should be on the hook, it should be the private banks which collectively own the Federal Reserve Board. The Fed is not a government agency, but is rather a private bank with a federal charter to act as a central bank for the USA.
Some of the above questions may be answered in the next Congress. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, a longtime critic of the Fed, will become the Chairman of the House Subcommittee that oversees the Fed. The third link reports that Rep. Paul “vowed…to shine a light on the Fed’s policies, which he called opaque and destructive [and] he would be willing to subpoena Fed officials to come testify before his panel.” Rep. Paul has also pushed hard for a complete audit of the Fed, an effort he is likely to repeat in the next Congress. The final link below adds more information about how tough Rep. Paul might be on the Fed, especially in light of Rep. Paul’s recent book entitled “End the Fed.” Probably for the first time since it was created, the Fed will face a very hostile Subcommittee Chairman overseeing its actions. The profligate US Congress is going to need a scapegoat to blame for the financial traumas that are coming, and the Congress might be very happy to back Rep. Paul’s audit of the Fed in order to shift blame from Congress to the Fed.
This is one more step on the road to the ultimate collapse of our current monetary/financial system, which is prophesied in Revelation 17-18 to occur in the latter days just before the rise of the beast system which will consitutute a global government for 42 months (Revelation 13:1-5) before it is utterly smashed by the return of Jesus Christ (Revelation 19:11-21) who will serve as KING of all nations for 1000 years (Revelation 20:1-4). The fact that the modern global financial system almost did globally collapse in September, 2008 shows how close we may be coming to the fulfillment of Revelation 17-18’s prophecy. My previous blog post reported on media links confirming the US government has been issuing “sham” economic statistics for many years and my December 4th, 5th and 8th blog posts cited media sources that even insiders are starting to turn against the Fed and that the influential Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) has warned the USA that it has to get its financial house in order or it will face “ugly and punitive” measures imposed on it by the rest of the world. Since that warning was issued, President Obama and the lame-duck US Congress have brazenly defied the CFR and essentially told the CFR to “go jump in a lake” so we will see how soon those “ugly and punitiuve” measures get imposed. I really hope that all readers have read and acted on the warnings in my article, Should Christians prepare for Future Hard Times. That article references the list of essentials that FEMA, a US government agency, states everyone should have on hand for emergencies. That list is also readily available in a websearch. Americans saw the federal government was very slow to provide help to New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. If the whole financial system comes down, how many weeks or months will it take for the federal government to provide meaningful assistance to…everyone? Will it ever be able to provide help to everyone, or will you and your neighborhood be “on your own”?
I’ll close this long, but important post with a possible eerie connection. Last night, the first full lunar eclipse on a winter solstice since the 1600s occured. Why might this be significant? The ancient sun-worshippers always placed great significance on eclipses and solstices. The modern banking system originated in ancient Babylon, and the first ancient banks lending money at interest were extensions of sun-god temples (as documented in my article, What Kind of Captivity?). Our modern financial/monetary system originated in sun-god worship venues, and Revelation 17-18 states God’s intentions to bring a very harsh judgement on this system (a Babylonian system grown “Great” all over the earth) in the latter days of our age. Genesis 1:14 records that God established the “lights” in the heavens to be “for signs and for seasons.” Keeping track of solstices and equinoxes were very important for ancient societies in terms of gauging proper planting “seasons,” but God also says that the heavenly bodies will sometimes give “signs” (omens) of things about to befall the earth. Will a full lunar eclipse all across North America on a winter solstice (an important event in the ancient sun-god worship system which bequeathed the banking system to the modern world) signal that the fall of Babylon the Great’s system will occur in the following year? I won’t make predictions, but I sure will be watching events very closely. I urge you to do so as well.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10691568
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/01/AR2010120106870.html
http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/banking-financial-institutions/132887-ron-paul-will-lead-subcommittee-that-oversees-the-fed
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/19/132183837/would-ron-paul-really-try-to-end-the-fed
