They'll Steal Your Assets and Sell Them For Pennies On The Dollar

                                                                                        From The Ramparts
                                                                                     Junious Ricardo Stanton
                                                                  They’ll Steal Our AssetsAnd Sell Them For Pennies On The Dollar

“Despite the fact that average American citizens, much like the Greeks, had nothing to do with creating these massive “budget holes,” their Social Security is being raided, and public pensions have been invested in derivatives and other toxic time-bomb financial instruments. Now, they will surely face austerity measures of similarly reduced benefits and services accompanied by increased taxes to absorb the damage. Although spending cuts and smaller government through privatization might make sense when faced with growing deficits, we must be aware that austerity measures can also hide in the shadows of privatization. Some politicians are touting the privatization of public services and assets as part of the economic solution. However, the public is being left out of the discussion about which services will be affected, what public assets are being sold, who is getting contracts or purchasing assets and, finally, to what benefit to the people. Given the self-serving track record of a crony corporate State, we can only assume the worst — that none of these actions will actually benefit average Americans, but only provide continued cover for more looting.” US Debt Woes Expose Hidden Austerity and Looting of Public Assets http://theintelhub.com/2010/10/18/u-s-debt-woes-expose-hidden-austerity-and-looting-of-public-assets/

Don’t blink, if you do the Kleptocrats will steal everything you have. Now they are doing it gradually but as they continue to get away with it under cloak and protection of the government, they will get bolder and bolder. Who are these master thieves and crooks who are robbing this country blind? They are the international banksters who own the Federal Reserve Bank, they are the hedge fund managers, the Wall Street Ponzi schemers and con artists, the local state and US officials they bribe with campaign contributions and a host of co-defendants too long to mention.
The economic implosion we are experiencing is not an accident or some abhorrent business cycle, it is part of a contrived, deliberate scheme to gut the US economy, reduce the middle class to debt ridden peons and usher in a neo-feudal economic system with the Kleptocrats as the new monarchy and land owners. The same strategy that they used to foment the stock market crash of 1929: promoting a get rich quick mentality based on ignorance of the system, massively over leveraged stock purchases, rigged markets using pump and dump schemes and insider trading to manipulate the stock market was used to pump up and subsequently crash the real estate, stock and derivatives markets. The game was so thoroughly rigged that the crash is still rolling out and we don’t see it because the corporate media is shilling for the system..It’s like living in a house infested with termites who are eating away at your foundation, damaging the load baring structures but your house hasn’t collapsed yet.

The same scheme that rocked Wall Street in the 1920′s is at play here only this time its on steroids. There are hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivatives about to collapse and that doesn’t count the over leveraged (on credit) Credit Default Swap side bets that have been laid that have yet to be called since the collapse hasn’t occurred yet. If you want to know what’s going on read John Perkins book Confessions of An Economic Hit Man or watch some of his lectures on YouTube. The same thing the IMF World Bank and US-Aid do around the world to third world countries is the same thing Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Lehman Brothers and the other giant investment houses did to Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Iceland, Eastern Europe and the US. This is why the people of Spain are in the streets now, why the Irish are up in arms and the people of Portugal are so pissed off pardon my French. If you want to see how it was done here rent the documentary Inside Job that won an Academy Award last year.

The same “austerity programs’ the IMF and World Bank loan sharks impose on third world countries when they get so far in debt they can’t pay the loans off and what Goldman is imposing on Spain, Portugal et al is going to happen here, only under stealth and trickery. Many states invested their pension funds in hedge fund derivatives and Wall Street Ponzi schemes hoping to get higher returns than the minuscule rates they were getting elsewhere. That was the hook the con men used to get their money. The Bu$h era tax cuts for the rich were designed to create huge deficits and the Bu$h/Obama imperialist wars are forcing the US to borrow more and more have created a debt bomb that is about to go off.
Now that the bottom is falling out, local, state and federal governments have to raise mad cash. Like the US many cities and states are stealing (they call it borrowing) from their employees’ pension funds which in most cases are already egregiously underfunded to keep the lights on and pay the bills. Uncle Sam has stolen most of the money in the Social Security Trust Fund and now they are plotting to destroy it so they don’t have to pay us what we are owed.
While Social Security is a modified Ponzi scheme it was working and would have survived indefinitely except the government has been stealing the money in the Trust Fund since the 1960′s.

Now more and more governments are being forced to sell their assets to raise cash. Jon Corzine the former governor of New Jersey tried to sell part of the Garden State Parkway and NJ Turnpike to raise money! I saw an article about one city that is selling the rights to their parking meters to get cash . This will be the new norm, massive fire sales of public assets to pay off loans or to operate the government. The fear is that municipalities will renege on their bond obligations or go into default so they have to raise cash any way they can.

“Cities and states across the nation are selling and leasing everything from airports to zoos—a fire sale that could help plug budget holes now but worsen their financial woes over the long run. California is looking to shed state office buildings. Milwaukee has proposed selling its water supply; in Chicago and New Haven, Conn., it’s parking meters. In Louisiana and Georgia, airports are up for grabs… The deals illustrate the increasingly tight financial squeeze gripping communities. Many are using asset sales to balance budgets ravaged by declines in tax revenues and unfunded pensions. In recent congressional testimony, billionaire investor Warren Buffett said he worried about how municipalities will pay for public workers’ retirement and health benefits and suggested that the federal government may ultimately be compelled to bail out states.” Facing Budget Gaps Cities Sell Airports, Parking Zoo By IANTHE JEANNE DUGAN Wall Street Journal August 23, 2010.

Foreign investors in China and the United Arab Emirates are buying US assets like crazy as are the international banksters whose goal is to own everything either directly or indirectly. It will be like the Middle Ages in Europe with a small group of haves and a massive sea of have nots. You and I are not in the haves elite circle. More and more local and state governments will sell off assets as their tax revenues shrink due to declining employment, tax give- a-ways to the super rich and the wars that are bankrupting the country. In fact US mayors are up in arms about the cash drain caused by the wars. “The annual U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting got off to an international start on Friday, with some backing a resolution to hasten the end of the Afghan and Iraq wars — and channel that spending to cities. The resolution calls on Congress to redirect the military spending to domestic priorities. The resolution says $126 billion is being spent each year on the wars that should be spent at home to create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, develop sustainable energy and provide for other needs.” MSNBC 06-17-11

The US mayors know what’s up and what time it is. They are pleading for help so they won’t have to have a huge fire sale to keep their cities operating. But the military industrial complex is a powerful entity and new wars are popping up every day. Unless more people in the US wake up, take to the streets to put pressure on the US Congress like their European counterparts are doing our heirs will be serfs, debtors and tenants in our own country.

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