Who Controls America

by Mark Mullen

The Fed was created to prevent bank panics, so what happened? Let’s start with the Fed’s flawed policy. Between 1929 and 1932, the Fed shrunk the amount of money in the economy by one-third causing the recession of late 1929 to turn into a full blown multi-year depression. Shrinking the quantity of money in the economy created deflation which increased debt. Mounting debts caused reduced consumption of products and increased unemployment. High unemployment led to bankrupt businesses, banks, and individuals. Instead of contracting the monetary base the Fed should have been expanding it in order to save banks and stem deflation. They didn’t because, like most government agencies, the governors of the Fed could not agree on a course of action, so they did nothing. Failure to act was the wrong action. The Fed was not the only government entity that created the Great Depression. It had help from Congress and President Hoover. In the summer of 1930, Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act raising American tariffs on imports by some 20 percent. The rest of the world did not like this and reacted in kind. American exports fell from over $5 billion in 1929 to roughly $1.5 billion in 1932. Unemployment in export industries exploded and farmers who normally exported nearly a quarter of wheat production and half of all cotton and tobacco saw their markets totally collapse. As if Americans weren’t already down and out, President Hoover and Congress landed another devastating blow ...

With inflation still at 10 percent, the Fed doubled the Fed funds rate from 10.25 percent to 20 percent in March 1980. The Fed kept this rate until May 1981. It ended inflation but created another recession lasting from July 1981 until November 1982. Not just another ordinary recession but the worst one since 1929. Unemployment hit 11 percent overall. In manufacturing, unemployment was the cruelest with 75 percent of all job losses coming in the manufacturing industries. Crop prices fell, and corporate bankruptcies increased over 50 percent from 1981.

The federal government set the interest rates that S&Ls could pay on deposits,

The legislation provided $50 billion to close failed banks and stem further losses and to regulate the industry better. In the following six years, the government shut down approximately an additional 750 S&Ls holding $400 billion in assets.

Once again, the Fed had a hand in creating this recession.

But nevertheless, the economy was moving in the right direction until 2008 when the Great Recession began. And once again, the Fed triggered a financial crises which brought America to its knees.

The Fed chose to ignore this warning and continued to raise the Fed funds rate even though the inverted yield curve grew larger by each passing month. By

But the Fed was not done maiming the American public.

By keeping the interest rates artificially low over for eight years (2008-2016), the Fed made middle class Americans poorer by reducing income generated through savings.

Remember the housing bubble crises of 2008? The federal government charged Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with buying high-risk loans from private lending institutions. Once Wall Street banks realized that Freddie and Fannie would buy bad loans, mortgage lenders began handing out over-sized loans to middle class citizens who wanted, but could not afford, a larger home. After all, the banker made his money up front from Freddie and Fannie. No waiting thirty years for the borrowers to repay. Instant profit paid in full by Uncle Sam. And the more bad loans private lenders could sell to Freddie and Fannie, the more risk-free money the banks made. If the homeowner defaulted on the loan, Freddie and Fannie—not the lending institution—suffered the loss.

Not content to serve as a monetary safety net for the American saver, the Fed has transformed itself into the warden of America’s credit allocation. By raising or lowering the Fed funds rate, the Federal Reserve decides who gets financing and who doesn’t. It decides who will gain wealth and who will go bankrupt. Fed manipulation of interest rates has a long history of stymieing economic expansion and middle class wealth through the creation of unnecessary and unwanted inflation.

With its unlimited power to create money out of thin air, the Fed has created financial panics, burst economic bubbles, and involved the United States in a world war. The Fed has put average Americans into the proverbial poor house while destroying trillions of dollars of citizens’ wealth. The Fed has continually interfered with capitalism and free markets while controlling the distribution of wealth. It’s time to fix the Fed.

I make the following proposals with the hope that some in Washington still care about our country.

In 1995 the assets of the six largest banks were equivalent to 17 percent of the United States’ GDP. In 2006 that number had grown to 55 percent. By 2013 it was 58 percent.

Keeping banks small enough to fail without government bailout might just be enough to keep bankers in check when it comes to risky investment.

This rule was to take effect in July 2015. It did not. In 2014, Citigroup lobbyists maneuvered, at the last minute, bank favorable language into a federal omnibus spending bill that was passed just three hours prior to a threatened shutdown of the government due to lack of funding. The inserted banking language repealed Section 716. President Obama was aware of the banking language yet chose to sign the spending bill into law rather than fight the banking industry.

According to Global Finance,[24] the seven safest banks in the world are publicly owned. No American commercial bank is in the top 40. Let’s make it easier to establish public banks giving citizens more banking choices.

But there is one final problem with college for all – a very fundamental problem that cannot be ignored. America’s public K-12 educational system does not prepare students for success in college. America graduates only about 82 percent of all high school students. Furthermore, according to U.S. News and World Report, only about 37 percent of high school graduates are equipped for college level math and reading.[31] Illiteracy in the United States remains a serious problem. It has been estimated that:[32] Some 63 million adults read between a sixth grade and eighth-grade level. Just 12 percent of adults are proficient readers. 30 million adults read below a fifth-grade level. 44 million adults read at a very basic level. 32 million adults cannot read. 19 percent of all high school graduates cannot read.

The UFT contributed about $5 million to politicians in 2014 and $0 on improving education. In the same year, the president of the National American Federation of Teachers was paid more than $557,000.

“When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.”

To create well-paying jobs Wall Street would have to sanction wage increases over double digit corporate profits.

This legally binding contract states that professors have complete freedom to teach any topic, any idea, using any materials they choose. In other words, individual professors are left to teach what they want. This means that two students attending the same university, taking the same course taught by two different professors could be exposed to two different sets of curriculum content.

Kindergartens were invented as a way of teaching social and good citizenship skills to the new immigrants.

1928.

Phonics was used to teach reading in America without question until the 1890s when John Dewey began a movement to change education from intellectual training to conditioning students to be obedient, conformist, non-thinkers. One of his disciples William Gray, dean of the University of Chicago’s School of Education, convinced the National Education Association that phonics instruction should be replaced with the look-say technique.

Remedial reading classes and dyslexia were born.

1949. Ralph Tyler, professor and chair of the department of education at the University of Chicago published Basic Principals of Curriculum and Instruction. The following short excerpt conveys his education philosophy. “Since the real purpose of education is not to have the instructor perform certain activities but to bring about significant changes in the student’s pattern of behavior, it becomes important to recognize that any statement of the objective... should be a statement of changes to take place in the student.” In other words, Tyler said education is not about academic prowess but about programming behaviors. This book is still in use today in many university education programs.

1955. Nila B. Smith, professor of education at New York University wrote the following excerpt published in the NEA Journal, “In the future, reading instruction must concern itself with much more than pedagogy. It must mesh more directly with the gears of vital social problems.” The purpose of reading is to solve social problems? No, learning to read should stand on its own legs for the singular purpose of developing literate individuals. Literate adult citizens can then determine for themselves what societal problems need to be addressed and how best to tackle them.

The first educational question will not be ‘what knowledge is of the most worth?’ but ‘what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce?”

The president of the National Education Association gave a speech to NEA members and declared, "First, we will help all of our people understand that school is a concept and not a place. We will not confuse ‘schooling’ with education.”

1984. U.S. Senator Peter Hoagland from Nebraska declares, “Fundamental, Bible -believing people do not have the right to indoctrinate their children in their religious beliefs because we, the state, are preparing them for the year 2000, when America will be part of a one-word global society and their children will not fit in. The reason we have to regulate church schools is that children that are not trained in state-controlled schools will not fit in.”

September 2016. First Lady Michelle Obama declares, “the choice in this election is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four years of their lives.”

Nine percent may not sound like much but consider that since 1980, the federal government has spent $1.5 trillion on education. That kind of money buys a lot of influence.

The Department of Education (DOE) awards discretionary grants that drive state governments to adopt federally approved standards and assessments. States that comply with DOE wishes get paid. This is how the DOE circumvents the U.S. Constitution. The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution states that any power not given to the federal government is given to the states.

State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS).

Why would the Department of Education need student DNA, fingerprints, family voting history, or other personal data? The argument used by the DOE is this data is needed to create computerized, personalized, and learning experiences. Computer software would use student data to design lessons based on the students’ non-cognitive skills such as current mindset and emotional status. But is that claim true? Shane Vander Hart of Kansans Against Common Core doesn’t believe so. “Federal involvement in education is about control, not education. The partnership between the federal departments of Labor and Education to further the development of fully functioning statewide birth-to-adulthood databases on citizens, and commonality of standards and testing across the country is reshaping the nation. It will result, as intended, in only people whose education they can control getting jobs, getting into college, and getting into the military. It’s a tool of control, not a tool of education.”[38]

Here is what Congressman Chaffetz found[39]:

The university does not exist to give you marketable employment skills or a job on Wall Street. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), only 27 percent of jobs in the U.S. require at least an associate degree. But it gets worse. The BLS projections show the economy will create 50.6 million job openings by 2022 and only 27.1 percent will require college degrees.[40]

College students are required to take roughly 40 to 60 percent of their classes outside of their major. If it wasn’t for these universal general liberal arts requirements, students could complete their degree in less than four years.

The Thomas B. Fordham Institute conducted a survey of education professors in 2012 and found that just 37 percent believed it was their job to train teachers how to maintain discipline and order in a classroom. The other 63 percent said it was not their job to be a trainer of teachers.[42]

Congressman Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Committee on Banking and Currency from 1920-31, stated, “When the Federal Reserve Act was passed, the people of these United States did not perceive that a world banking system was being set up here. A super-state controlled by international bankers and industrialists…acting together to enslave the world…Every effort has been made by the Fed to conceal its powers but the truth is–the Fed has usurped the government.”[54]

The Marshall Plan was only the beginning of a never-ending policy of interfering with independent nations and their disputes with other foreign governments. It was the beginning of America as the international police officer. Truman’s belief that the United States should support free nations who are resisting attempted suppression by outside pressures led to the United States involvement in Korean back in 1950.

Vietnam and Communism

Its overall recommendations for the area are modest and total in the neighborhood of $60 million.

59] Between 1950 and 1954, the United States funded the French’s war effort in Vietnam to the tune of 78 percent of all costs.[60]

Several times during Ho Chi Minh’s career he had petitioned the United States to recognize Vietnam’s independence and support the end of the French colony status. The first time was to Woodrow Wilson in 1919. Wilson refused to meet with him. The second opportunity came in 1945 when he requested Truman to recognize an independent Vietnam under the Atlantic Charter. Truman did not respond. These were missed opportunities by the United States to influence the future of Vietnam. Then, in 1950, the Soviet Union’s General Secretary Joseph Stalin recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a nation. Ho Chi Minh now had access to war supplies and in 1954 defeated the French. A peace treaty, the Geneva Accords, separated Vietnam into two sections. The North governed by Ho Chi Minh, and the South governed by the State of South Vietnam.

Elections were scheduled to take place in 1956 to unify Vietnam, but the United States refused to allow the election to take place. Dulles was afraid that communists might win the election making the unified country a communist nation. As a result, Vietnam stayed separated at the 17th parallel. The lack of elections set the stage for further conflict between the North and South.

As a result of Johnson’s testimony, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution which allowed the president to take any necessary steps, including the use of force to help any SEATO member requiring help in defending its freedom. In effect, the resolution gave the president war-making powers without a Congressional declaration of war. As it turns out, Johnson lied to Congress or Johnson was lied to by Secretary of State McNamara or both. The Maddox was not in international waters. It and other destroyers were in North Vietnam’s territorial waters with the intent of provoking North Vietnam to attack while they gathered intelligence on their radar systems. U.S. ships fired on the North Vietnamese ships first. The following text comes directly from the Pentagon Papers released by the federal government in 1971.

So essentially, the United States Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false and deceitful information given to them by the Johnson Administration. The National Security Agency (NSA) eventually took the blame saying they mishandled intelligence and admitted there was no second attack on the Maddox.[61] U.S. military ground and air involvement in Vietnam seems to have been based on untruths. Interestingly enough, Richard Helms, director of the CIA and a member of CFR, controlled this operation and not the Navy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under President Carter, traveled to Afghanistan in 1979 and met Bin Laden. He told Bin Laden their cause was right, God was on their side, and to make the Russians bleed for as long as they can.[69]