Ben Bernanke has decided that he needs to teach all of us why the Federal Reserve is good for America and about why the gold standard is bad.  On Tuesday, Bernanke delivered the first of four planned lectures to a group of students at George Washington University.  But that lecture was not just for the benefit of those students.  Officials at the Fed have long planned for this lecture series to be an opportunity for Bernanke to “educate” the American people about the Federal Reserve.  The classroom was absolutely packed with reporters and just about every major news organization is running a story about this first lecture.  So the Federal Reserve is definitely getting the publicity that it was hoping for.  You can see the slides from the presentation that Bernanke gave to the students right here.  It is pretty obvious that one of the primary goals of this first lecture was to attack those that have been critical of the Fed over the past few years.  In doing so, Bernanke “stretched” the truth on more than one occasion.

The entire event was staged to make Bernanke and the Federal Reserve look as good as possible.  Prior to his arrival, the students gathered for the lecture were actually instructed to applaud Bernanke….

The 30 undergraduates at George Washington University sent up a round of applause. It was, they’d been told beforehand, “appropriate, even encouraged, to politely applaud” Tuesday’s guest lecturer.

But as noted above, this lecture was not for the benefit of those students.  AUSA Today article even admitted that “addressing the public directly” was one of the real goals of this lecture….

For Bernanke, the GW lectures serve a dual function:

They give him a chance to reprise the role of professor he played for more than two decades, first at Stanford and then at Princeton, where he eventually chaired the economics department.

And they give him a way to expand his mission of demystifying the Fed. As part of that campaign, Bernanke became the first Fed chief to hold regular news conferences and conduct town-hall meetings.

In addressing the public directly, Bernanke has also sought to neutralize attacks on the Fed, some of them from Republican presidential candidates.

So what did Bernanke actually say during the lecture?

Well, you can read all of the slides right here, but the following are some of the highlights….

On page 6 of the presentation, Bernanke makes the following claim….

“A central bank is not an ordinary commercial bank, but a government agency.”

Well, that is quite interesting considering the fact that the Federal Reserve hasargued in court that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is not an agency of the federal government and that the various Federal Reserve banks around the country are private corporations with private funding.

So did the Federal Reserve lie to the court or is Ben Bernanke lying to us?

And what other “agency” of the federal government is owned by private banks?

It is even admitted that the individual member banks own shares of stock in the various Federal Reserve banks on the Federal Reserve website….

The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

The Federal Reserve always talks about how it must be “independent” and “above politics”, but when they start getting criticized they always want to seek shelter under the wing of the federal government.

It really is disgusting.

On page 7 of the presentation, the following statement is made….

“All central banks strive for low and stable inflation; most also try to promote stable growth in output and employment.”

Well, on both counts the Federal Reserve has failed miserably.

Right now, if inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1980, the annual rate of inflation would be more than 10 percent.

And when you take a longer view of things, the inflation that the Federal Reserve has manufactured has been absolutely horrific.

Even using the doctored inflation numbers that the Federal Reserve gives us, the U.S. dollar has still lost 83 percent of its value since 1970.

The truth is that inflation is a “hidden tax” that is constantly destroying the value of every single dollar that you and I hold.  Those that attempt to save money for the future or for retirement are deeply penalized under such a system.

As far as employment goes, the total number of workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States is larger than the entire population of Portugal.

The average duration of unemployment is hovering near an all-time record high and almost every measure of government dependence is at an all-time record high.

So the Federal Reserve is failing at the exact things that Bernanke claims that it is supposed to be doing.

But instead of directly addressing many of the specific criticisms that have been leveled at the Fed, Bernanke instead chose to spend much of his lecture talking about the problems with adopting a gold standard.  The following are statements that were pulled directly off of the slides he used during his speech….

-”The gold standard sets the money supply and price level generally with limited central bank intervention.”

-”The strength of a gold standard is its greatest weakness too: Because the money supply is determined by the supply of gold, it cannot be adjusted in response to changing economic conditions.”

-”All countries on the gold standard are forced to maintain fixed exchange rates. As a result, the effects of bad policies in one country can be transmitted to other countries if both are on the gold standard.”

-”If not perfectly credible, a gold standard is subject to speculative attack and ultimate collapse as people try to exchange paper money for gold.”

-”The gold standard did not prevent frequent financial panics.”

-”Although the gold standard promoted price stability over the very long run, over the medium run it sometimes caused periods of inflation and deflation.”

-”In the second half of the 19th century, a global shortage of gold reduced the U.S. money supply and caused deflation (falling prices). Farmers were squeezed between declining prices for crops and the fixed dollar payments for their mortgages and other debts.”

Bernanke spent more time on the gold standard during his speech than on anything else.  At one point during the lecture, Bernanke made the following statement….

“To have a gold standard, you have to go to South Africa or someplace and dig up tons of gold and move  it to New York and put it in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and that’s a lot of effort and work”

Bernanke even blamed the gold standard for the Great Depression.  On a slide entitled “Monetary Policy in the Great Depression”, Bernanke made the following claims….

•The Fed’s tight monetary policy led to sharply falling prices and steep declines in output and employment.
•The effects of policy errors here and abroad were transmitted globally through the gold standard.
•The Fed kept money tight in part because it wanted to preserve the gold standard. When FDR abandoned the gold standard in 1933, monetary policy became less tight and deflation stopped.

Bernanke seems to want to frame the debate over monetary policy is such a way that the American people are given only two alternative systems to consider: the Federal Reserve and a gold standard.

But the truth is that there are a vast array of both “hard money” and “soft money” systems that would not include a central bank or a gold standard at all.

So the truth is that the American people would have many different systems to choose from if they wanted to shut down the Federal Reserve and set up something new.

In the past the U.S. government has issued debt-free money and it could certainly do so again.

But in his lecture, Bernanke did not even mention how the Federal Reserve creates money or how whenever new money is created more debt is created.

Under the Federal Reserve system, the money supply is designed to continually increase, and whenever more money is created more debt is also created.

In a previous article I discussed how more money is created on the federal level….

For example, whenever the U.S. government wants to spend more money than it takes in (which happens constantly), it has to go ask the Federal Reserve for it.  The federal government gives U.S. Treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve gives the U.S. government “Federal Reserve Notes” in return.  Usually this is just done electronically.

So where does the Federal Reserve get the Federal Reserve Notes?

It just creates them out of thin air.

Wouldn’t you like to be able to create money out of thin air?

Instead of issuing money directly, the U.S. government lets the Federal Reserve create it out of thin air and then the U.S. government borrows it.

Talk about stupid.

The designers of the Federal Reserve system intended to trap the U.S. government in a debt spiral that would expand perpetually.

So has their design worked?

Well, just look at the chart below….

Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.

So I guess you could say that the results have been spectacular.

The Federal Reserve system also greatly favors the big Wall Street banks that it is designed to serve.

When those big banks get into trouble, the Federal Reserve snaps into action.

According to a limited GAO audit of Fed transactions during the last financial crisis, $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve to the big Wall Street banks between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010.

The following list is taken directly from page 131 of the GAO audit report and it shows which banks received money from the Fed….

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
“All Other Borrowers” - $2.639 trillion

What about all the rest of us?

Did we get bailed out?

No, we were told that if Wall Street was rescued that the benefits would trickle down to the rest of us.

Unfortunately, that has not exactly worked out.  In article, after article, afterarticle I have detailed the horrible economic suffering that the American people are still going through.

But what Bernanke and the Fed have done is create inflation in commodities such as oil which is affecting the household finances of nearly everyone in America.

The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now up to $3.87.  That is an all-time record high for the month of March.

So far in 2012, the price of gasoline in the United States has risen by 17 percent.

Thanks Bernanke.

Over the past several decades, every time there has been a major spike in gasoline prices in the United States, a recession has always followed.  If you doubt this, just check out this amazing chart.

So will we soon see another recession?

If we are lucky.  Hopefully the next downturn will not be a full-blown depression.

The truth is that the Federal Reserve does not help us avoid booms and busts.  Rather, it creates them.  The Fed was at the heart of the housing bubble which helped bring on the last financial crisis when it crashed, and the current ultra-low interest rate policies of the Fed are creating more bubbles which will have devastating long-term consequences.

So Bernanke does not have anything to be proud of, and his track record has been absolutely nightmarish.

Hopefully the American people will not believe the propaganda and will take an honest look at the Federal Reserve.

When you take an honest look at the Federal Reserve, there is only one rational conclusion: Congress should shut it down, lock the doors and throw away the key.

Source: The Economic Collapse.

*Written by Rob Rimes.

Introduction:

I don’t hate Mitt Romney but I am certainly not a fan, which should be obvious at this point. I do hate the goddamned media for giving him an unfair advantage over the other candidates but truthfully, that isn’t his fault. Romney isn’t the absolute worst presidential choice out there, which many of my colleagues and readers may disagree with vehemently, but he is still a progressive statist bastard that is hellbent on controlling the lives of all of us in an effort to keep the giant wheel of the establishment machine rolling. I have been nasty to the guy many times in my countless diatribes about the 2012 election but my distaste and malcontent has been for a very good reason. Point being, I know that Romney can’t save this country and I feel that this is painstakingly obvious even though I find myself completely befuddled over the fanfare and support that this guy gets, not just form the media – their support is understandable, but from the conservative voting public who are all pretty much in unison behind this guy’s idea of smaller government, less taxes and squashing the budding police state. This guy will not solve any of those problems. In fact, he will only magnify them and dig our giant pit of legislative bullshit deeper and deeper. Hell, the pit is practically bottomless at this point but electing Mitt Romney will only solidify that fact even further.

I’m certainly not saying that Obama is a better choice out of the two. Realistically, I don’t think there is much difference between one or the other. This is a prime example of there being just one big government party with two wings: one that wears blue shirts with donkeys on them and one that wears red shirts with elephants on them. The worst part about this is that most “conservatives” are following Romney, as well as Gingrich and Santorum, believing in the hypocritical rhetoric that they’ve got a small government guy on their side who will fight for them. Realistically, those who support these guys are ignorant in economics and foreign policy. It is incredibly unfortunate but as Ron Paul said in a recent debate, “Conservatives have lost their way.”

Now I can’t completely cover every negative thing on Romney’s record, as there is a lot, but I am going to talk about a few points. In the end, it is really your decision as to where you want to put your vote but you really need to think this through and ask yourself where you want to be in four years. Do you want to be climbing out of the hole or do you want to be yelling at the guys that are still digging and digging?

Smaller Government:

The first thing worth getting into is definitely the issue of Mitt claiming that he’ll work towards making government smaller. Mitt Romney, who has preached for this over the course of all these debates, has a really shitty record of practicing what he’s been preaching. In reality, Mitt has been feeding into the desires of the voter base and has been stringing them along with his version of the popular rhetoric of the day. The sad thing is that many of the people who support this douchenugget are taking all this bullshit at face value and not looking at reality. Truthfully, maybe Romney actually believes his empty words and his supporters might not be adept enough to see through the Orwellian doublespeak. Let me rundown his track record of big government bullshit by ripping the fucking band-aid off: exposing the man’s economic sores.

I could write a whole damn article about the monstrosity that is Romneycare but I won’t bore you or myself with the details that have already been recycled a million times and beaten into the ground with Thor’s hammer by every critic for several years now. I’m over the Romneycare issue personally. I don’t like it, I think it’s shit, it was the blueprint for what became Obamacare but it was done at the state level, not the federal level and most Bay Staters still approve of it, so that is their economic cross to bear.

One thing that many Romney supporters don’t know or just choose to ignore is the fact that he significantly raised taxes in Massachusetts while he was governor. While preaching fiscal conservatism and pimping himself out as friendly to business, Governor Romney increased the tax bill on businesses by $300 million! He and his cronies also approved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of higher fees and fines on businesses in just four years! Many business owners were incredibly dissatisfied with Romney as governor. Essentially, corporate taxes under Romney almost doubled in just his one term.

I guess the tax hikes were necessary though, as Romney drastically increased spending in Massachusetts. In 2006, Ol’ Mittens increased spending in just that year by 7.6 percent. In 2007, he increased spending again, this time all the way up to 10.2 percent. During just his four years in office, he increased state spending by a total of 20.7 percent! That’s a lot of debt thrown on the taxpayer but at least those hefty tax hikes on corporations absorbed some of the burden. Maybe this tax burden accounts for the fact that Mitt Romney managed the 47th ranked state, out of 50, in the realm of job creation. That brings me to my next point.

Romney has been touting his job creation success while working at Bain Capital. He proudly boasts about creating corporations like Staples, Sports Authority and Steel Dynamics, all of which have created hundreds of thousands of jobs. However, as governor, unemployment was a real problem in Massachusetts. Sure, he did great in the private sector and as Romney himself has said, “Jobs are created in the private sector.” However, all of his job creation skills didn’t translate to success when he reached office. So what makes the public think that this job magician’s magic wand will suddenly work this time? Yes he is a self-professed business master but he couldn’t tap into that while running Massachusetts so essentially his trial run at it was a failure. On the issue of Romney’s job creation woes, Boston Herald business reporter Bret Arends wrote:

During the four years Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, it had the second worst jobs record of any state in America…it wasn’t a regional issue. The rest of New England created nearly 200,000 jobs.

The question no one ever seems to ask Governor Romney is how many jobs were destroyed in an effort to build his monstrous corporations. Now I am not attacking him for building giant successful businesses, as that is the nature of the beast – good or bad. I am just trying to point out how skewed these sorts of statistical claims are because if you created say 300,000 jobs but your new businesses eliminated the jobs of say 250,000 people whose businesses you closed down through competition, well then you’ve only really created 50,000 jobs. This is a simple ballpark example but it should show you how some statistical claims can be made when you only tell one side of the story. Hell, government has been using these sorts of statistical tactics for years when releasing inaccurate numbers to sway public opinion for a candidate, a bill or whatever else they have needed public approval on.

Another issue that shows how non-small government this ass clown is, is the TARP bailouts. Mittens hates when people bring the subject up and has gone as far as lying and completely denying that he ever supported it but there is tons and tons of evidence that says otherwise. In fact, Romney was incredibly passionate about poorly run banks getting a massive taxpayer funded bonus for sucking at business. On CNN, a few years back during the bailouts, Romney said:

I think there is a need for economic stimulus. Americans have lost about $11 trillion dollars in net worth. That translates into about $400 billion dollars a year less spending that they’ll be doing, and that’s net of additional government programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance. And government can help make that up in a very difficult time. And that’s one of the reasons why I think a stimulus program is needed.

Sounds like small government to me! So why would he be so pro-big bank? Well, let’s look at his top campaign contributors from a recent list. His top contributor is Goldman Sachs who gave $354,700. Next up is Credit Suisse Group at $195,250 and Morgan Stanley at $185,800. Every other contributor in the six figures is also in the banking industry. You’ve got HIG Capital, Barclays, Kirkland & Ellis, Bank of America, PricewaterhouseCoopers, EMC Corp. & JPMorgan Chase. His top ten contributors are all fucking banks! Occupying Wall Street should start on Mitt’s front lawn! This shows a sharp contrast from Ron Paul whose top three campaign contributors are the Air Force, the Army and the Navy. Paul’s biggest contributor is also a lot less than six figures. So who really understands the plight of the average person? Romney is so far up on the Wall Street crony capitalist ladder than he can’t remember how to get down – not that he wants to.

People that call Barack Obama the Wall Street president haven’t seen anything yet. On campaign contributions from the big banks, Obama has made significantly less than Romney. Goldman Sachs gave Obama $49,124, Morgan Stanley coughed up $28,225, Bank of America gave $46,699, JPMorgan Chase came in at $38,038 and Citigroup was at $36,887. You do the math but it is obvious who the bailed out banking industry supports.

Another thing worth noting is that Romney has gotten more money from lobbyists than all other Republican candidates combined. I guess you need all that special interest money to work towards smaller government. Damn it! That Mitt Romney doublethink is taking over my brain!

The fact of the matter is, love it or hate it, Mitt Romney has a proven track record of being nothing less than one of the heads on the big government hydra. He is an economic nightmare but because people take him at his word and don’t look at his record, he can continue to dupe the masses into thinking that he’s on their side.

Mitt Romney will say anything to get elected.

Continued in Part II: Foreign Entanglements..

*Written by Rob Rimes.

1. Introduction:

This isn’t an attack on Herman Cain. I’m not going to be a complete dickhead to Mr. Cain as I was with Rick Perry in my article “American Psycho: The Ballad of Rick Perry“. However, as Herman Cain is leading in many polls and could legitimately win the Republican nomination if the primaries were held today, I do have to rip apart his platform and expose why this guy is not who we need running this country. Most of the reasons as to why you shouldn’t vote for Herman Cain should be blatantly obvious but yet, many of you still insist that he is the best choice out there. While he would be better than our current president Barack Obama and current Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney, Mr. Cain still isn’t worthy of the American throne and would ultimately perpetuate many of the problems we have right now.

Now I have met Herman Cain and have gotten to talk to him, albeit briefly. At that time I didn’t know much about him but there were rumors of him running for president so I felt that if he was in my neck of the woods, I’d have to go down to the event, shake his hand, get a picture with him and try to pick his brain on some things. As there was a large crowd lined up to kiss ass and praise this unproven potential candidate, I didn’t feel that it was the best time or place to air my grievances with the government in an effort to hear his solutions and ideas. I’d really need more time with him to fully discuss these things and I didn’t want to put him on the spot like that in front of hundreds of people. Knowing what I know about him now, I’d have no problem with it today. In fact, I’d have a camera with me.

Anyway, at the time, I did know that he was a staunch FairTax supporter and that alone had me initially interested in his campaign but then again so was Marco Rubio but he abandoned the issue once he got elected (I wrote about that in “Tea Flavored Kool-Aid, Part II: The Fall of Marco Rubio“). I left the event feeling like Herman was genuinely a good guy that cares for this country and I still believe this. However, I wasn’t aware of his association with the Federal Reserve at the time. If I was, my brief meet and greet with Mr. Cain would’ve been different. In fact, in his eyes, I would’ve just been one of those “ignorant” Paulites asking him “stupid” questions.

2. The Federal Reserve:

Now in regards to the Federal Reserve, Herman Cain has been a defender of their horrible and certifiably insane fiscal policies. Well, he has come out and talked some smack here and there about Ben Bernanke but truth is, if he were to give Bernanke props, he’d get booed off the stage and he knows this. Everyone hates Bernanke on the right. Now don’t get shit twisted, they don’t hate him because of Ron Paul taking him to school and spending a lot of his time trying to educate the masses on the tyranny of the Fed. Nope, people on the right hate Bernanke because Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly hate Bernanke. Many righties don’t understand why they hate him, they just know that they’re supposed to.

However, before Ben Bernanke, there was another just as tyrannical monetary dictator. That man was Alan Greenspan. Greenspan was Herman Cain’s boss when Mr. Cain worked for the Federal Reserve branch in Kansas City back in the 90′s. Recently when Cain was asked which past Fed chairman he would use as a model for a replacement for Bernanke, Cain without hesitation said, “Alan Greenspan”. Really homie? I guess the warning signs and economic lessons of history must’ve just passed this Super CEO by. Maybe Cain doesn’t realize that Bernanke is just the hellspawn of Greenspan. Maybe Cain doesn’t understand inflation. Then again, maybe Greenspan was one hell of a mentor and this Fed insider is going to bring about a Greenspan-style fiscal policy. No thanks bro, you can keep your Greenspan bullshit for your pizza parlor.

For those not educated on the horrendous shit that fucknut Greenspan gave us, here are a few examples. First, Greenspan was directly responsible for the housing bubble due to adjusting interest rates down to historic lows. He also contributed to the recession we’ve been dipping in and out of over the last few years. He recently dodged the bullet of responsibility on this when he blamed the recession on the Cold War. Yes, the fucking Cold War! Didn’t that end like over 20 years ago? Another thing that Greenspan gave us was trade deficits and bad economic policies that contributed to companies leaving the United States. Alan Greenspan was also the king of inflation. But yeah, this is who Herman Cain would use as a model for a new Federal Reserve chairman. This is who he selected without even putting any thought to the question. I guess those guys from the Federal Reserve have some sort of blood oath they all swear to. Suck my dick and I’ll suck yours.

Apart from just the Alan Greenspan issue, Cain has been overprotective about the Federal Reserve and has shown some pretty thin skin whenever the tyrannical and unconstitutional institution is criticized. First of all, I implore all of you to read “The Creature From Jekyll Island” by G. Edward Griffin if you haven’t yet; especially if you are going to vote for Herman Cain. You need to know the history of the Federal Reserve and how and why it was founded. For Cain to have been a part of it should raise some damn eyebrows and for him to defend it should raise those eyebrows even more. What is he trying to hide by continuously downplaying the issue and trying to divert everyone’s eyes elsewhere?

You see, Cain has criticized those who criticize the Fed, especially Ron Paul supporters. He refers to them as “ignorant” and their questioning him about it as “stupid”. He has been pretty vocal about his distaste for us crazy Paulites, as he calls us. He said that we would find nothing if we were to audit the Federal Reserve. Funny, because not too long after he made that statement we were able to get a partial audit. In that partial audit we discovered a lot of tyranny and some pretty questionable acts. For instance, the audit this past July revealed that the Fed gave out over $16 trillion dollars in secret bailouts! That’s pretty fucking profound and that’s just scratching the surface! Yet, Mr. Cain said we wouldn’t find anything. Well Mr. Fed Insider, here is a breakdown of the secret bailouts which can be found on page 131 of the GAO (Government Accountability Office) Audit:

Citigroup: $2.5 trillion ($2,500,000,000,000)
Morgan Stanley: $2.04 trillion ($2,040,000,000,000)
Merrill Lynch: $1.949 trillion ($1,949,000,000,000)
Bank of America: $1.344 trillion ($1,344,000,000,000)
Barclays PLC (United Kingdom): $868 billion ($868,000,000,000)
Bear Sterns: $853 billion ($853,000,000,000)
Goldman Sachs: $814 billion ($814,000,000,000)
Royal Bank of Scotland (UK): $541 billion ($541,000,000,000)
JP Morgan Chase: $391 billion ($391,000,000,000)
Deutsche Bank (Germany): $354 billion ($354,000,000,000)
UBS (Switzerland): $287 billion ($287,000,000,000)
Credit Suisse (Switzerland): $262 billion ($262,000,000,000)
Lehman Brothers: $183 billion ($183,000,000,000)
Bank of Scotland (United Kingdom): $181 billion ($181,000,000,000)
BNP Paribas (France): $175 billion ($175,000,000,000)
and many more including banks in Belgium

Herman Cain says the Federal Reserve has nothing to hide. As my Aunt Rita used to say when one of us kids was lying, “Mmmhmm.” If anything, this just proves that a full audit of the Federal Reserve is absolutely necessary. Abolishment of the Fed would be even better.

Herman Cain also believes the Federal Reserve to be constitutional. On the Rusty Humphries radio show he said:

First of all, it’s not unconstitutional. What happened was, in 1913 the Congress of the United States designated the authority of the Federal Reserve to be created. So how can that be unconstitutional? Congress has to pass the law, Congress has to pass the authority to do things and that is what they did. So it is not unconstitutional number one.

Really dude? So with that logic, we should just accept all laws created by Congress whether tyrannical or not. So really, based off of your own point-of-view, you should shut the fuck up about Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and your confusing stance on abortion among many other issues. Cain is like a character from an Orwell novel.

3. TARP:

All this brings me to my next issue, which is the fact that Herman Cain supported the TARP bailouts. Yeah, that sounds like something a Fed insider would do. In fact he said that he supported it but didn’t know how they were going to implement it. M’kay, so to me, that sounds completely ignorant. He supported it without knowing the whole picture. Then after it turned to shit, which was obvious, even back then, to those who understand free market economics, he says he didn’t like it. So Herman Cain is essentially and unknowingly admitting that he is not only not a free market guy, as he has claimed, but that he doesn’t have the foresight to recognize the disastrous effects of this sort of fiscal policy. But hey! Now he’s got some economic advisors to guide him! If only Herman Cain would’ve absorbed Milton Friedman’s prophetic wisdom in his “Free To Choose” series. Hell, dude could’ve read anything from the heavyweights of the Austrian School and learned that this sort of policy would only lead us down a path of fiscal insanity.

However, I believe Cain knew what he was supporting. In fact, here’s a quote from an article he himself wrote in 2008 when supporting the big bank bailouts:

Earth to taxpayers! Owning stocks in banks is not nationalization of the banking industry. It’s trying to solve a problem…

Wake up people! Owning a part of the major banks in America is not a bad thing. We could make a profit while solving a problem…

The ownership by the taxpayers is going to be relatively small and nowhere near the amount needed to be called nationalization. So what’s the problem?

Now don’t tell Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, but if this works, and I believe it will, the Bush Administration will have gotten this one right.”

*rolls eyes. Here’s some more:

..the free market purists want you to believe that this is the end of Capitalism that we know it.

..the treasury has changed tactics and will buy equity positions called preferred stocks, which gives us taxpayers an ownership stake in their success for a limited period of time.

Preferred stock means that we get paid a dividend before any other stockholders…when they make a profit. You got a problem with that?

The free market purists objection to this is that it smacks at government control of banking industry, which is called nationalization. They are correct.

He recognized that it was nationalization of the banking industry, yet he still supported it. He recently came out in a debate and owned up to it, not that he could hide from it. Looking at it objectively though, being that he is a Republican presidential candidate and knowing that his voter base hated the bailouts, wouldn’t he come out and talk smack about them now? Where I sit, this is a bigger issue than all the Romneycare bullshit that sucks up so much debate time and hatred from the righties.

By the way, while on the subject of Romneycare, Herman Cain supported Mitt Romney for president last round in 2008. So does that make Cain cool with Romneycare? Well, he had to have been down with it at some point, right?

4. The 999 Plan and the FairTax:

Herman Cain got a lot of notoriety and Tea Party love due to his very passionate and very vocal support of the FairTax. He was one of the loudest voices championing in probably the best form of tax reform this country could ever have. In fact, when the debates started, he was front and center pimping out the FairTax every chance he could get. Somewhere along the line that shifted and he no longer mentioned the FairTax. Now he was talking about his 999 Plan, which was another style of tax reform that he claims simplifies every thing. It calls for 9% corporate tax, 9% income tax and 9% national sales tax (which doesn’t exclude state and local sales taxes added on top).

The 9% national sales tax is basically the FairTax (which by itself would be roughly 23%). The big difference here is that the FairTax calls for a repeal of the 16th Amendment, which would kill the income tax because the FairTax would be its replacement. The 999 Plan does not call for a repeal of the 16th Amendment.

Now many Cain supporters that are also FairTax supporters still seem to be on this guy’s dick, which puzzles me. He’s abandoned their pet issue in favor of his own plan. Many of these people consider 999 to be a stepping stone to get to the FairTax, including nationally syndicated radio talk show host, ‘The FairTax Book’ author and Cain’s BFF Neal Boortz. I think this assessment by Cain Brains is complete bullshit for several reasons.

The fact that the 999 Plan doesn’t call for a repeal of the 16th Amendment is completely careless and horrible. Not to be a negative Nancy here but say 999 is implemented and the 16th Amendment is not repealed, we would be stuck with the current tax code on top of this new 999 Plan. So we would have the current income tax, corporate tax and all other taxes on top of a 9% flat tax, a 9% corporate tax and a 9% national sales tax also on top of all local and state taxes. How could this plan even be developed without taking this into consideration? If Cain understands the FairTax, which he has proven that he does, how could he be so careless with his 999 Plan?

The FairTax and Flat Tax movements have always been somewhat at odds as the FairTaxers know that the Flat Tax will just lead us back to this point economically. You see, we already have a flat tax, it was implemented in the Reagan era. However, after decades of congressional meddling, we now have an out of control insane income tax system. You see, the flat tax can be tweaked and modified to the point that its whole existence is damn near pointless. Cain knows this, yet he includes it as one-third of his plan. It has proven to be a failure long-term. People just ignore history or just don’t know that we’ve been down this road already. To include a flat tax and essentially the FairTax (sales or consumption tax) in the same tax reform plan is fucking ridiculous.

Now one issue that everyone criticizing this plan brings up, is that what is to prevent 9-9-9 from becoming 15-15-15 or 23-23-23? The answer is “nothing”. There is nothing in the plan that will prevent congressional meddling and as we all know, as history has always proven, some people are just going to toy with it and we will be stuck up shit’s creek without not just a paddle but no boat as well. The fact of the matter is, trading a giant leviathan for three baby leviathans is never a good deal. The village may be safe from destruction for a little while but eventually the beasts will grow and the damage will be catastrophic!

Now the whole idea of this being a stepping stone is laughable. The reality of the situation is that Cain has abandoned the FairTax issue. I know that none of you FairTaxers out there want to believe it, especially since you’ve sent this guy a check already but that’s the truth. We’ve got ourselves another Marco Rubio here. The passion of the average FairTax supporter is dangerous because earning the love of the movement can bring a candidate to the dance. This is just another case of that. There is no way that 999 is a stepping stone. When has a stepping stone ever worked in Washington? Not only that, but both the 999 Plan and the FairTax are HUGE tax reforms. Does Cain think he will be able to accomplish two huge tax reforms in his presidency? That’s beyond fucking absurd.

First of all, most people already hate this 999 Plan to begin with, so good luck with that. But even if he were to pass it, he’d then have to convince everyone that the FairTax is better. Dude, no one is going to believe you at that point because you gave us a plan that you weren’t confident with and obviously weren’t even sold on. And if he is sold on the 999 Plan, then he’s not going to give us the FairTax. It’s a pretty easy assessment if you ask me. To think it is a stepping stone doesn’t make a lick of sense! Truth be told, if you really are looking for the FairTax candidate, get the fuck off of the Cain Train and get on the Gary Johnson Cruise Ship. He’s the only true FairTax supporter in this race now.

5. Misuse of Campaign Funds:

One fucked up thing Herman Cain has done is misused campaign funds. In fact, he has used funds to enrich himself and his associates. The biggest example of this is that he used over $100,000 of donated money to buy copies of a booklet from a corporation called T.H.E. New Voice, Inc. Problem is, Herman Cain owns T.H.E. New Voice, Inc.! Essentially, he is spending campaign money to buy campaign materials from a company that he owns and profits from. Sorry homies but this is just shady as fuck. When criticized about the issue, Herman Cain said:

If they know Herman Cain, they wouldn’t even make such an assertion. How’s that for political correctness!

What a dick. The more this guy talks, the more it is pretty obvious that he is his own biggest fan. Sorry Herman, we DON’T know you because you jumped on the scene a few months ago and have no political track record other than a failed attempt at a senate run in 2004 and your tenure as Director of the Federal Reserve’s Kansas City branch which is wrapped in secrecy.

Cain has been using every campaign stop to sell and promote his new book “This is Herman Cain!: My Journey to the White House”. What a title! He’s pretty full of himself already thinking he’s a shoe-in for the American throne. But anyway, one has to question if he is in this to truly become president or to make a profit. If it is to be president, then he needs to stop setting up shop to collect a profit from his Cain Brains at his campaign events. He should be focused on putting all that money towards the campaign itself. Then again, he’s just using that to make a profit off of as well. Either way, Super CEO Mr. Cain has this whole money making scheme figured out.

Apart from his fancy literature, Cain has also profited a lot from speaking engagements while he has been on the campaign trail. This year alone, Herman Cain has already banked $250,000 from making personal appearances. Between this and all the other campaign abuse shenanigans, the Daily Mail points out:

Political pundits have compared the situation to that of Sarah Palin, who lost her vice presidential bid but made hefty pay checks afterwards due to speaking fees, book sales, and television rights.

The other, more sinister, comparison is to Jim Wright, the former Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives in the late 1980s who resigned in the wake of an ethics investigation looking into the connection between bulk purchases of his book and gifts from supporting groups.

Granted other candidates throughout history have been guilty of similar self-promotional bullshit but that doesn’t excuse it and there should at least be an investigation into it. Wouldn’t Mr. Cain be all over Barack Obama if the roles were reversed? Hell, any of the candidates on the Republican stage would be pointing the finger.

6. The Police State, the PATRIOT Act & War Powers:

If Herman Cain had his way, he’d be standing on the bridge of a Super Star Destroyer while his Imperial Stormtroopers pillaged Hoth in an effort to thwart those homegrown terrorists. Why would I make such a correlation between Mr. Cain and Darth Vader? Well, let me explain.

Recently, in an interview with The Atlantic,  Darth Cain came out and said that he had no problem with warrantless wiretaps on American citizens if it was being done for counter-terrorism. He also said that he supports the biggest tyranical monstrosity of all-time, the PATRIOT Act. Cain in defense of the PATRIOT Act said:

If 90 percent of a counter-terrorism law is sound we shouldn’t worry about the other ten percent.

Wow! Really? That’s pretty fucked up. Nope, no need to worry about this 10 percent of tyrannical bullshit because this other 90 percent seems okay! When asked about the domestic side of counter-terrorism, he said:

I’m a little troubled by police officers being able to go into a home without a warrant or a court order… But that being said, I would rather error on the side of detection.. ..I also believe that we’ve got to give our intelligence agencies the leeway in order to be able to protect us.

It was Ben Franklin who said:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Herman Cain must’ve never read that quote, which doesn’t surprise me considering he has continually misquoted the Declaration of Independence as the Constitution.

Cain also doesn’t necessarily disagree with the tyrannical TSA he just feels that they “lack common sense”. For the record, Cain also said that harsher drug laws were needed. Apparently Cain is not educated on prohibition, Constitutional law, individual rights, property rights or common sense. Sorry folks but Cain has adopted the views of a neocon on these issues.

When asked about what he thought on Obama and the use of war powers in regards to the Libyan situation, Cain said:

My thoughts are less on whether he has the authority to do what he’s doing than why is he doing what he’s doing. Clarity of what he’s doing and why is more important than whether or not he has the authority to do it.

M’kay, that’s just fucking scary! Cain doesn’t care what the law is! All that matters is “what’s the motivation”. These two sentences sum this guy up pretty well across the board. This pro-Constitution Tea Party conservative really could give two shits about the law. We don’t need another king that thinks he’s above the law that just acts on his gut.

7. The Super CEO & Lack of Experience:

People keep touting how great of a business man Herman Cain is and that he is this political outsider that is going to take Washington by storm, clean up the girdlock and make our country as fiscally efficient as America’s 9th largest pizza chain. That all sounds great but Cain Brains are overlooking reality and are just accepting Herman Cain’s business prowess at face value.

To start, you can’t say that the man has no political experience, he does. Whenever Cain says that he is a Washington outsider, he’s full of shit. To be a director of a branch of the Federal Reserve one has to play the political game. That is not a position for drones. Granted he had a boss in Alan Greenspan but he still had to work within the political system and have a pretty solid understanding of it to be able to effectively hold that job. To think that this is a non-political position is asinine. Also, he did run for senate and has had some political experience in that aspect. This is not his first campaign, he is not going into this blindly.

However, lets entertain the idea that Cain is an inexperienced outsider, as he claims that he truly is. Why would any of us want that? One of his famous overused catchphrases when asked about his lack of experience against experienced candidates is:

Well, all the people in Washington D.C. have held public office before. How’s that working out for ya?

Typically the Cain Brains cheer when they hear this catchphrase; I cringe. Does not having experience against those who do, who have been shitty with it, somehow make you a better choice? Besides, not everyone in D.C. with experience is bad. The people that rally behind this are just easily swayed by catchphrases and slogans and can’t separate reality from Cain’s charismatic schtick. It’s like the Bachmann Bunch cheering every time Michele rambles incoherently and then adds, “Let’s make Barack Obama a One! Term! President!”

Herman Cain professing that his lack of experience is why we should vote for him is like a blind guy telling us that he should drive the bus because the last few drivers who could see got us into a few accidents. But then again, Cain’s been working and lobbying in D.C. for decades. His staff just can’t come up with a good one-liner to express the truth effectively.

As for being this great CEO, a lot of information has come out as of late that makes these claims seem somewhat overinflated. Yes he did work for several big companies and helped turn some of them around and on paper that makes him look like a business genius. Regardless of if he was the genius or if he just had good people around him is a moot point, as being the CEO he gets the credit. Well, he also gets the credit for some of the questionable things that have risen to the surface in regards to his potentially shoddy management style.

Recently, the Atlanta Post and Mother Jones Magazine, ran articles that talked about how Cain, as well as his board of directors, were being sued by the employees of Aquila, an energy company in the Midwest. Mother Jones describes Cain’s tenure at Aquila:

..scrubbed from Cain’s official story is his long tenure as a director at a Midwest energy corporation named Aquila that, like the infamous Enron Corporation, recklessly dove into the wild west of energy trading and speculation—and ultimately screwed its employees out of tens of millions of dollars.

In 1992, Cain along with Aquila’s board of directors allegedly steered employees to take money out of their retirement funds and to move it into company stock. Granted they didn’t put a gun to the heads of their employees but this was still the product of these unethical schemers worried about their own personal bottom lines. After doing this, the company left its conservative business model behind and became more aggressive by carelessly engaging in risky energy trading. Money was lost and the employees who dumped their money into company stock were super pissed. Their lawsuit claims that Cain and the Aquila board of directors violated a 37-year-old federal law that states that employers must responsibly manage employees retirement programs. Cain has been asked about this, not by conservative pundits mind you, but he and his campaign refuse to comment on the issue.

You see, between his desire to keep the Federal Reserve shrouded in secrecy on top of his questionable business actions and his verbal distaste of us “free market purists”, Mr. Cain is apparently a practitioner of corporatism not capitalism. Herman Cain is the living embodiment of what the Occupy Wall Street protestors are angry about, at least the smart ones who know why they are down there. This is why Herman Cain is so critical of the OWS protestors. After admitting that he didn’t have “all the facts” but suspected that the protests were orchestrated to distract from Obama policies, he told the protestors that if they aren’t rich, to “blame themselves”. While it can be said that there is some truth to that, you’re not going to gain any votes taking cheap shots at a whole movement.

You could blame Cain’s harsh words on his supposed inexperience but I really just think he has a hard time not putting his foot in his mouth. Cain needs to think before he speaks and that statement alone just alienated a huge segment of the country that he could’ve worked towards getting as supporters. What Cain should’ve done is gone down there like presidential candidate Gary Johnson did. Talk to the people, break some bread and discuss how we can come up with a solution. I mean, homie is a self-proclaimed “problem solver” or is that just another catchphrase?

Despite the conservative media’s claims, there are people down there with real concerns who want answers to real issues plaguing them. You can’t discredit an entire movement based off of an influx of idiots that have showed up to take the spotlight in interviews. Besides, it’s not like the media isn’t looking for idiots to showcase. Essentially, Fox News and other conservative media outlets are hypocrites that are doing exactly what they bitched about when the liberal media was looking for every excuse to discredit the Tea Party. But whatever, two wrongs make ratings.

8. Religious Intolerance:

One issue that irritates me about Herman Cain is that he has no respect for individual rights. Then again he probably thinks he does but his religious intolerance blinds him to reality. One example of this is when he said:

I believe that homosexuality is a sin because I am a Bible believing Christian. I know it’s a sin but I know that some people make that choice. It’s their choice. ..I believe it is a choice.

Wow dude, really? This is that typical Republican Evangelical bullshit that keeps the GOP in the stone-age and allows the Democrats to justifiably gain the support of gays, lesbians and other groups affected by this sort of bigoted intolerance. Herman Cain believes that homosexuality is a choice. Blind faith in such idiocy that has no scientific evidence to support it is well.. never mind, he is a faith driven man who disregards science. That’s not a shot at Christianity, it’s just a shot at this sort of right-wing stupidity.

If Cain believed in individual rights, he wouldn’t care about someone’s sexual orientation. What they do is no one else’s business and they are free to live in this society in any way they want, as long as what they do doesn’t infringe upon the rights of anyone else. Then again, people with Cain’s mindset feel that seeing two dudes holding hands in a park is an attack on them personally. How dare they infringe on his rights by being happy in front of him! On social issues Cain is no different than a guy like Rick Santorum or Pat Buchanan.

Cain also shows his intolerance with his incredible fear of Islam growing in the United States. Yes, we do not need Sharia Law in the U.S. but guys like Cain are so paranoid of it that they would have you believing that we are on the cusp of an Islamic revolution here in the United States. This sort of fear mongering breeds more hatred, more racism and more intolerance. Those truly affected by it are the Muslims that don’t practice the very rare extreme form of their religion. In effect, their religious freedom is hindered and criticized. Somehow the biggest offenders of this intolerance are Christians who disregard the fact that their religion also has an incredibly violent history that forced people to change wherever it staked its cross in the ground.

On the issue of abortion, Cain is all over the fucking place. He says he is “pro-life from conception.” When asked if he thinks that some form of abortion should be legal, he says “government shouldn’t be involved.” Then he says that “people shouldn’t be free to abort because if we don’t protect the sanctity of life from conception we will also start to play God relative to life at the end of life.” Uh huh.. what? Where does Cain stand on the death penalty? Well, he officially has no stance which means that he doesn’t believe his own words about playing God “at the end of life”. Cain says he is “pro-life period!” When asked if a woman is raped should she be allowed to abort the baby, Cain says, “That’s her choice. That is not government’s choice.” So then he is asked if abortion should be legal and Cain snaps back with “No!” WTF?! Anyone else confused?

9. Conclusion:

Now there are other issues with Cain besides all of this but this article is already pretty massive. The point is, after knowing all this, how could you vote for Herman Cain? He’s a pretty shitty candidate at the end of the day and he will only give us more of the same. Sure, he’d probably be better than Obama but that is not a reason to vote for him because frankly, he is not the best choice.

Truth is, if you have read this and still want to vote for him and want to continue to make excuses for all of these points, you are a part of the bigger problem. You shouldn’t vote for a candidate you have to make excuses for. No one is perfect but Cain is further away from perfect than some of the other choices out there. He is NOT going to pass the FairTax and hell, his 999 Plan is dead in the water right now. In fact, it is the sales tax part that has everyone up in arms. He’s considering changing the 9% sales tax to 9% of something else. The sales tax part is the FairTax part! If he omits it for something else or is even considering it, which he is, then he’s not really trying to bring the FairTax to the table. He’s sticking to his 999 Plan because it is a fucking catchphrase, nothing more.

When pressed by EVERYONE on how shitty the plan is, he can’t defend it. He gets visibly irritated and just says to go to his website and re-read it. This guy doesn’t have the confidence or the understanding to defend his magic plan and on top of that, his skin seems to be getting thinner and thinner on the subject. On a side note, the 999 Plan was created by his economic advisor who works for Wells Fargo and looks like a bald Ben Linus from ‘Lost’. Do you really want to trust a bald Ben Linus?

You see, Herman Cain is just charisma and catchphrases with little to no real substance. Voting for Herman Cain would be like voting for the WWE Intercontinental Champion. A few flashy words to fire up a crowd isn’t going to change the world let alone get us out of our current economic peril. Cain is a professional politician, contrary to what he claims, because he knows how to play the people, which is what he is doing. It has gotten to the point that I almost find it offensive. Unfortunately, too many people just can’t see beyond all of the colorful rhetoric. It kind of parallels Obama in a way.

All I’m saying is that you probably need to make a wiser decision. This “inexperienced” guy holding office is a scary thought. If you want more crony capitalism and a guy that admits he isn’t knowledgeable repeatedly and always turns to some secret advisor, then vote for Cain. Frankly, he is not presidential material; he is motivational speaker material. The problem is, too many have been duped by his over the top presence and are taken in with his message. The reality of the situation is that the message just isn’t clear and with Cain’s track record, could easily shift or change. You can’t rely on a guy that relies on his advisors to shape his gut reaction. Not that having advisors is a bad thing, but Cain’s let it be no secret, albeit inadvertently, that they are calling the shots. In the end, I think Cain just sees this as the start of a long-term business plan and that is unfortunate. This time next year he’ll probably be a co-host on ‘The Five’.

My Two Cents: Do I need to point out the obvious? End Two Cents.

*Taken from the American Dream.

We are never going to restore legitimacy to our political system until we get the money out of politics.  Typically, in federal elections the candidate that raises the most money wins about 90 percent of the time.  In 2008, Barack Obama raised almost twice as much money as John McCain did.  3 of the top 7 donors to Obama’s campaign were big Wall Street banks (Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup).  Now Wall Street is doing it again.  The big Wall Street banks are already trying to buy the 2012 election.  So who do they want to win in 2012?  Based on contribution patterns so far, the overwhelming favorite of the Wall Street banks to win in 2012 is Mitt Romney.  The big Wall Street banks have given to Romney as pile of money that is more than 4 times larger than they have given to anyone else.  Even though most Republicans really don’t want him, if history is any indication this means that Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee for president in 2012.

Posted below are numbers from a recent analysis done by the Center for Responsive Politics.  These numbers reflect monetary donations to presidential candidates by employees of these big Wall Street banks (and their wives) between January and September 2011.

As you can see, somehow Mitt Romney is at the top of each list by a wide margin.  Clearly there is a “consensus” (some would call it a conspiracy) among the Wall Street elite that Romney is the man for the job.

CONTINUED..

Capitalism: it is a word that for some means freedom, prosperity and the answer to all of our economic woes. To others, probably most in the media and in the Capital Beltway, it is a dirty word. See, capitalism is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. We can blame sloppy cuntpickles like Michael Moore and Karl Marx for pimping their bullshit view of it to the feeble masses. Granted, it is also those feeble masses that grasp onto that skewed misrepresentation of capitalism without fact checking and looking into it for themselves. People, especially liberals and college aged hipster-hippie hybrids, view capitalism as the supreme force of oppression in the world.

Via TheSwash.com

*Taken from Bloomberg.

Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.

By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.

CONTINUED..

*Taken from CNBC.

In less than 40 years India will overtake the US as the world’s second-largest trading nation, pushing today’s superpower into third place and Europe in to the little leagues, according to a new report by Citi.

“According to our projections, world trade in goods and services will grow from $37 trillion in 2010 to $149 trillion in 2030 and $371 trillion in 2050,” Citigroup’s William Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari wrote in a research note released on Thursday.

“But at least as interesting as the growth in world trade that we forecast are the changes in its composition that we expect over the course of the next four decades, with today’s emerging markets set to gain much more prominence in world trade relative to advanced economies,” they added.

CONTINUED..

*Written by Rob Rimes.

“A man who publicly talks or writes about the opposition between capitalism and socialism without having fully familiarized himself with all that economics has to say about these issues is an irresponsible babbler.” - Ludwig von Mises

Capitalism: it is a word that for some means freedom, prosperity and the answer to all of our economic woes. To others, probably most in the media and in the Capital Beltway, it is a dirty word. See, capitalism is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. We can blame sloppy cuntpickles like Michael Moore and Karl Marx for pimping their bullshit view of it to the feeble masses. Granted, it is also those feeble masses that grasp onto that skewed misrepresentation of capitalism without fact checking and looking into it for themselves. People, especially liberals and college aged hipster-hippie hybrids, view capitalism as the supreme force of oppression in the world. They are so sure of their position and any friendly debate on the subject is usually met with hatred and anger backed by the blind faith in their own idiotic stance. Their theory and understanding of capitalism is similar to Swiss cheese, as it is full of holes. It doesn’t matter to these pro-socialist “moral pillars of strength” what the real facts are. Truth be told, I know I am writing this pretty much in vain, as those who agree with me don’t need a refresher course in reality and those who sit on the other side of the fence don’t really care about what lies on this side because this side is full of evil minions to the money devils who feed on the blood and sweat from the less-fortunate working class people of the world. But fuck it, I’m writing this anyway.

1. An Introduction:

Capitalism, quite simply is complete freedom. It is freedom to do what you want and to use your skills or your sweat to try and prosper and make a living for yourself. It is a flawless and perfect system, contrary to what people think they know to be true. Truth is, in a capitalist system, everybody has a fair shot at being the winner. I know the libsnots reading this are laughing right now, just waiting for me to further prove my insanity. Well, my stance is not insane, in fact, when you look at it realistically and understand the true essence of capitalism and all other isms, you may become enlightened.

See, we have never really had true capitalism in this country. Well, at least not for the last 100 years. What we have had for a century or more is a system where capitalism is in constant combat with socialism, progressivism and big government regulation. We do not live in a capitalistic nation, as much as that pains me to say. What we live in is an oligopoly. You could just call it a clusterfuckistic system but oligopoly seems to fit when one looks at the fact that this country is made up of a cluster of monopolistic corporations that only exist, in the way that they do, through big government meddling. The big government meddling is what destroys the capitalist state. It is that meddling that gives capitalism a bad name.

People, typically of the left, do not seem to be able to make the correlation between crony capitalism and capitalism. Crony capitalism is not really capitalism it is what happens when government implements regulations, restrictions, subsidies, tariffs and any other thing that they do to tweak the system. Essentially, the government picks the winners and the losers in a classic case of “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours”. When the government picks the winners and the losers the free market is eliminated, freedom is snuffed out and capitalism crumbles. Capitalism IS freedom. Capitalism IS the free market. The meddling stifles capitalism. Point blank fucking PERIOD.

When the shitnipple maroons call for “social justice” they do not understand what exactly it is they are calling for. Social justice is a pipe dream, it is something that does not and cannot ever truly exist. It is the bookish lib’s answer to the monstrosity that is capitalism. If only that bookish lib actually picked up a book that wasn’t on their professor’s required reading list. If that happened, they could potentially learn the error of their misguided ways. Then again, they don’t want to.

Most arguments against capitalism are born out of the inability to understand the difference between true capitalism and government-regulated capitalism. One argument is that capitalism creates a divide between the rich and the poor. Another argument is that capitalism keeps the rich in power: forever. It is also believed that capitalism is oppressive and that it exploits the less fortunate. It has been blamed as the destroyer of communities, the essence of greed and the evil empire that devours mom and pop only to shit out mega-super-uber-stores on every corner in America. It destroys the environment. It is looked at as a global epidemic that forces its way into international markets to create Americanized slaves that fiend for Big Macs, Marlboros, Centrum Silver and Levi’s 501 jeans. God forbid capitalism and its intrusion into foreign societies! How dare they make the Chinese buy Adidas deodorant and Coach bags! What’s next, the Chinese themselves turning away from their communist system and embracing capitalism? Um..yes! As they champion in capitalism, we seem to be championing in socialism. It’s a sad ass state of fucking affairs y’all! Maybe China is where I will live in the future. I need to remember to order the Mandarin set from Rosetta Stone when I get home tonight.

2. The Unholy Creator of Class Warfare:

Leaving the China point for now, I want to focus on one of the arguments against capitalism. That argument is that capitalism divides the classes: making the rich, richer and the poor, poorer while the middle class ceases to be. This argument is bullshit, here’s why.

The first question I pose is a common one when discussing the subject of capitalism and poverty. The question is this: have you ever gotten a job from a poor person? Now while that can be foolishly debated, the general answer is “no”. If it weren’t for rich people and the opportunities they provide, due to their own successes, most people would be in a position much worse than they are now. Capitalism creates prosperity all the way down the line. If government stifles capitalism, the opportunity for prosperity all the way down the line is also stifled. The economics of capitalism are really just plain fucking common sense. There are no magic tricks or smoke and mirrors here. Criss Angel is pulling no strings.

Apart from working for someone, the reality is that, under capitalism, no poor man is prevented or prohibited from creating his own fortune and his own prosperity. Let’s jump into the DeLorean, fire up the Flux Capacitor, and go way back to a time when capitalism existed in the United States in a much purer form than it does today.

In the latter half of the 1800′s, droves upon droves of people came to this country for the opportunity to prosper in a truly free society. In the 1800′s, government meddling in the affairs of economics and the free market was damn near non-existent compared to modern times. Thanks to the government keeping their hands off of business and industry, the Industrial Revolution was born and millions of immigrants became successes and lived out their individual American Dreams. America became a great nation, if not the best nation in the world. American Exceptionalism was the reality of the day.

You see, millions of non-English speaking immigrants crashed our shores, set up shop and within a generation, many if not most, became huge success stories. People that could be no more than farmhands, servants, shepherds or cobblers became doctors, lawyers, businessmen, inventors, scientists and tycoons. Capitalism brought these people out of their meager existence and provided them with a platform to become whatever they wanted to become. Within a generation, these immigrants were among America’s elite! Because of this, more people flocked to America and the world’s most talented and most skilled became true Americans citizens that contributed to our rise as the beacon of hope and freedom for the rest of the world. Capitalism gave birth to the greatest nation on Earth.

The pro-socialist front is completely inept to the reality of capitalism. They would rather live under a system where the government “redistributes the wealth” and provides nationalized health care. Let me ask another question: who is better off, the guy who is provided for by the state, who eats, sleeps and breathes regulated and rationed welfare or the guy who busted his ass, persevered amongst the competition and got a job working for Apple, Citigroup, Verizon, Conoco-Phillips, Bank of America, General Electric or AOL/Time-Warner? That guy is the guy who can stand on his own two feet and provide for his own?

To quote a line from the article “Capitalism and Poverty” published on Capitalism.org, who would people rather be under:

“A Mother Teresa who hands them bowls of slop every day, so they can barely exist — or a genius like Bill Gates who creates a fortune for himself by helping others to create fortunes for themselves, i.e., “where the first feeds them for a day, the second helps them feed themselves.” Observe that it is the Bill Gates of the world who are not allowed to exist in India — and the Mother Teresas who are.”

I think the answer here is obvious, but that brings me to another argument. That being the fallacious argument that corporations are inherently evil and that they crush the backs of the little people by exploiting their skills and labor: selling products and services saturated with the blood and sweat of the non-rich. Yawn.

3. The Sinister Seed of Evil Corporations:

First of all, corporations are generally looked at as profit-driven monsters out to devour the common man and rip his soul to fucking shreds. People fail to realize that corporations, in their simplest form, are groups of individuals. Corporations are people too. In fact, corporations employ most people, especially in the United States. If the corporation who provides you with a paycheck is “evil” then get off of your damn ass, go out and get another job: simple as that. Or try to be the hero and destroy the phantom beast from within, but good luck with that approach homie.

See, contrary to popular bullshit, people are not at the mercy of the corporation or their employers. The fact is, in a free market system, people have the freedom to choose their own way. One can argue that a single mother with six kids is locked in her job and can’t quit and that the employer who knows this is going to push her against the wall, day in and day out. While the employer may be a retched douchebag, the woman has the choice to stay there or not to stay there. In contrast to the capitalistic system, in a socialist or communist society the woman would not have the freedom to make that choice. Her position in life would have been chosen for her and there would be no escape from it, other than to flee her country, probably illegally and short of death, in an attempt to make her way to America. I mean really folks, which system perpetuates more abuse?

The truth is that corporations provide countless opportunities for people all over the world. Corporations are the creators of jobs and the supplier of nearly all the world’s currency to the common man. Without corporations, many people would starve. I’m not talking about the amount of starving people we have now, I am talking the possibility of global famine.

Without the opportunities provided by corporations, billions of people would be out of work. Granted, they could go into business for themselves but the dog-eat-dog atmosphere on the global scale would be monolithic. In the end, even in this fantasy scenario, corporations would just rise anyway; it is fucking inevitable. Besides that, the level of just general innovation and progress in the world would be slowed down tremendously. People couldn’t create on a large scale, in the same way, without the corporate entity.

At their core, corporations are a voluntary collection of organized labor and innovation, taking the risk in a shared endeavor. Corporations pull together the resources for a common goal to achieve profit. When it comes to the sheer number of the people that are a part of this voluntary collection, just keep in mind that the top 10 Fortune 500 companies alone employ over 5 million workers. That’s not counting the other 490 companies!

Now, I am not trying to paint all corporations as fucking saints here, let’s be realistic. There are those corporations who do exploit the worker and the common man. However, going back to the issue about government meddling, one can see that it is that factor that allows certain corporations to get away with such activity. It is the crony capitalism that creates these heinous scenarios and because of that, it is crony capitalism that needs to be exposed for what it is. If the markets and trade were truly free, corporations who used these sorts of tactics to fatten their bottom line would quickly fall to a more ethical competitor. Regulation of business and trade, as stated before, picks the winners and losers. When the winner is locked into the top spot, with competition eliminated and politicians turning a blind eye, they are able to run rampant and literally get away with murder. Under a pure capitalistic system, this could not be.

What also must be understood is that corporations don’t do bad things, people do. Once you look at the fact that corporations are a collective of individuals working together towards a common goal, you can better understand that, like with all groups, there are usually a few bad apples. However, for every bad apple, there are several other people within a company who are ethical and who want to prosper and use their goods or services to better the world. Yes, it is about profit at the end of the day, but to create profit one has to create a good or service that is in demand by the consumer. The most successful and important products are the ones that change the world and redefine our lives.

In regards to the bad apples, those are the people we usually hear about on the news. They are able to get away with what they do because of government management and regulation of the system. The ladder climbing dickbags who take the shortcuts and trade favors do so because of our polluted political system. When our eye is off the ball in Washington and our leaders pull off their infamous backroom deals, another example of crony capitalism is born. If “we the people” aren’t responsible and informed enough to hold our representatives accountable, then how can we be sure that they are doing the right thing for our country economically? How can we be sure that they aren’t working out a deal that will benefit their district, even though it may seem noble, that will somehow leave others negatively affected by a seemingly minor regulation that has hatched some sort of unintended consequence? It happens everyday in America.

4. The Apocalyptic Harbinger of Monopolistic Doom:

Moving on to another argument, I want to dispel the myth that capitalism creates monopolies. Just like every other argument thus far, the growth of corporations into monopolies would be damn near impossible if it weren’t for regulation by the federal government. The free market is a natural remedy to the problem of monopolies, let alone the oligopolies that run the world out in the open and behind the scenes. When you look at the sources of nearly every monopoly, you find that it has become what it is through government intervention.

Super-Economist Milton Friedman, the man behind the series “Free To Choose”, asked a student years ago, that if he could pass just one law that would limit the growth of monopolies, what would that law be. The student, after some thought, proposed that the government should limit the size of the market that companies can offer their goods or services to. You see, when you break down what this student said, you can see that his method is simply about leveling the playing field. It is creating “fairness” and thus, limiting the success of the companies who have bested their competition. Most companies would fall under the weight of this proposal and those that survived would not be allowed to grow and in turn could not hire new employees as they expanded. Eventually, we would get to where there is only one company left standing and just by default, that company, by itself, would be a monopoly.

Milton Friedman didn’t go that deep with the student in breaking down his one magic law, but what he did was rebuttal with a suggestion. What Mr. Friedman suggested was that the answer to eliminating the monopoly/oligopoly problem was free trade. He continued with:

“Eliminate all tariffs and all restrictions on foreign trade and you enable the world to come in as competition to prevent domestic monopoly.”

Sounds pretty easy, right? Too bad the government can’t keep their hands off.

It is similar tactics that created and prolonged the Great Depression as well as our country’s current economic recession. The meddling is troublesome and destructive. Chaos is born out of anything that the government has tried to control. There is absolutely no evidence to the contrary, so why should it be any different when they try to tinker and tweak the capitalistic system?

5. The Hate-Mongering Cultural Destroyer:

The next argument is the one that claims that capitalism has poisoned the world by forcibly Americanizing and destroying the cultures of foreign lands. This is one of those senseless and idiotic assertions that make me want to headbutt anti-capitalists in the fucking teeth.

So is there some invisible gun being held to the heads of all the people around the world who are dying to get American products, as well as wanting to experience American pop culture? Only if there is an invisible gun forcing Americans to watch Anime and buy Hello Kitty panties. Common sense shatters this half-assed myth. The point is American culture captivates people, especially those who don’t experience it on the level that we do in the United States.

Realistically, we are all probably so desensitized to everything and most of our cultural awesomeness is taken for granted and considered just common experiences. To rectify our cultural desensitization, many Americans watch Asian cinema and French films. Many buy toys, trinkets and other interesting foreign goods because it is different and unique: an escape from the norm. This works both ways. The cool thing about it is our cultural exchange brings all of us closer together and helps us understand one another on a more intimate level. It is no wonder why the party-pooping shitcocks want to piss on our parade. God forbid we don’t live in fear of one another. God forbid we find commonality and like-interests.

While the government in Iran bitches about the Americanization of their youth, Glenn Beck is balling his eyes out over the Chinese toys in Happy Meal boxes. You can’t force cultural nationalism. That useless and bullshit tactic is quickly becoming a thing of the past and those who don’t go with the flow of the river are just going to be smashed on the rocks.

6. The Sadistic Rapist of the Consumer:

Another stupid fucking argument against capitalism is that by allowing companies to run free without regulation, those companies will take advantage of the consumer. That sounds logical, I have to admit, but when one observes and understands the machinations of federal regulation, common sense takes over and shatters that crackpot myth. Keeping this as simple as possible, let me break it down.

When the government regulates a business, that business’ profits are negatively affected. A regulation, whether it is a limit on their reach as a producer or a tax or tariff on their goods, shrinks a company’s bottom line. If the bottom line is shrunk enough, the company has to lay off their employees and often times has to shut their doors. If they want to remain competitive, they simply can’t. So for a company to survive under these circumstances, it has to pass the cost of these various regulations on to the consumer.

For example, a Mace Windu lightsaber for your kid that was once $20 is now $30 because of corporate tax hikes on the plastic company that makes the shell of the lightsaber. Also, new safety regulations were implemented on the electronics company that makes the lightsaber light up while having cool sound effects. That’s not all; the factory that prints the boxes for the lightsaber was affected by the rising cost of ink, due to the ink company’s attempt at surviving environmental regulations. The company that distributes the toy from the factory to the store is affected by the rising gas prices due to new regulations on petroleum as well as payroll increases do to union meddling. The store then has to compensate at the end of the line due to new local taxes it has to pay on its property. This seems like a crazy scenario but this is what is happening to businesses all over.

In a capitalist system without these regulations, the lightsaber would still be $20. Hell, it would probably be a lot cheaper. The fact of the matter is, once again, that crony capitalism and regulation are to blame here, not capitalism itself! Is the common sense aspect of how capitalism works starting to sink into your skull yet?

7. The Savage Rip-off Artist:

Another area where capitalism takes a lot of shit is in regards to prices. People often bitch about the price of things and blame capitalism as the greedy beast behind what these people feel are goods and services that are too expensive. Apparently these people don’t realize that they don’t have to buy a goddamned thing that they don’t want to: well except for health insurance, thanks to fucking Obamacare. Realistically though, what you buy is your choice. There are plenty of choices and alternatives out there.

The fact that people have freedom of choice doesn’t seem to concern the government however. Just like with everything else, the federal government thinks that they have the authority and right to meddle with the system. In this case, the government directly sets limits and regulations on prices! To some of you bleeding heart pissants, this may sound great. However, those of us with a sense of reality can clearly see how this is fucking horrendous. For those confused, let me explain why.

I’m going to use the example of rent control because I recently read Robert P. Murphy’s “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism” and he made a great point with it. Also, it is an example that hits home: literally.

See, with rent control, the government is essentially capping the price a landlord can charge for a particular unit in his building. This is, of course, done so that poor people can have “affordable housing”. Like with every socialist program, to the unenlightened it seems noble but in reality, it is a gigantic clusterfuck of unintended consequences.

What rent control really does is it provides less housing for people, not to mention turning the existing housing into slums. The reason being that if the government comes in and says that Unit A which is priced at $500 now has to be priced at $100, more people are either going to buy up more units or the landlord is going to rent out less, as the government regulation has just eliminated the opportunity for profit. In essence, a housing shortage has just been created. Try explaining this logic to progressives.

In fact, if the landlord does rent the units out, his very small profit margin makes it difficult for him to be able to maintain the property. So if a dishwasher breaks, a leak destroys a ceiling or the heater needs repair, chances are, it is less likely to be taken care of by a landlord with little to no money. Thus, the slumlord is born.

So when a property developer shows up in your town to make a multi-million dollar high-rise apartment complex, the developer is doing this to make as much profit as he can: that’s Business 101. Now, is this developer going to build in the area where there is government regulated rent control or is he going to build where he has the freedom to charge what he wants? You see, under this example, rent control programs disable a town from being able to effectively manage their long-term growth. Basically, the growing population is stuck in the same shitty rundown apartments that the city has been controlling for years.

Rent control takes houses off the market and prevents new ones from being erected. This is just one example of government intervention in price control but it doesn’t take much to see how to apply this to other areas.

8. The Egomaniacal Environmental Enemy:

Capitalism also catches a bad and misunderstood rap when it comes to how it affects the environment. Lefty Greenpants wants you to believe that the evil corporations spawned from the satanic womb of capitalism are polluting our oceans, smogging our skys and creating the mythical creature known as “man made global warming”.

Man, why are hippies still around? They are pretty much a useless and whiny sect of society apart from just living in the past and looking for their new Vietnam to protest, which they’ve found in the green movement that is relentlessly pushing for eco-fascism. So anyway, sorry for the previous run-on sentence. Moving ahead, let me use my magic to dispel this bullshit liberal talking point.

If capitalism does anything, it helps the overall health of the environment. Yes, I wrote it. Hell, I’ll write it again. If capitalism does anything, it helps the overall health of the environment. There, has it sunk in? No, probably not.

The real problem is that government meddling, as with all things, makes this particular situation worse. You see, the environmental practices in a socialist or communist society are much worse than they are in a capitalist society. One has to look no further than the tragedy at Chernobyl. The nuclear reactor accident that took the lives of dozens of people and still leaves the area radiated 25 years later, could have been prevented in a capitalist society. It was the government controlled communist regime that allowed the nuclear power plant to fall into ruin. Do you think this would have happened had the power plant been privately owned? The short answer: fuck no!

Now clueless lefties may want to counter with the Three Mile Island scare in the United States but in reality, it was just a scare. Public outcry and their overblown reaction were really due to the fact that the film ‘The China Syndrome’ was released less than two weeks earlier. That film, its premise being about meltdown at a nuclear reactor, came out during the big boom of Hollywood disaster films. This was the primary cause of the hysteria that surrounds the incident even to this day.

When the subject is recycling, capitalism also outshines government regulations on that. The fact is, government and Lefty Greenpants did not invent recycling: capitalism did. For decades, if not centuries, capitalism has recycled and reused countless products and resources in an order to maximize their profits and eliminate senseless waste. Whether those products or resources are plastic, steel, cardboard, aluminum, etc.

The way government screws it up is that they enforce environmental regulations that force companies to recycle nearly everything. By trying to eliminate waste the government is creating more waste. How so?

Under regulation, companies are forced to make changes to the way they run things. They now have to transport, or pay someone to transport materials to a facility to be recycled. In some cases, they have to build and maintain their own facilities to handle the recycling of resources. These practices cost money, time and negatively impact profit. Also, the transportation of goods causes pollution, as does the new methods of recycling. It is an example of how trying to fix a problem, which isn’t even a problem mind you, only makes the problem much worse for everyone. The government invents new problems while killing jobs in the process.

Private corporations are well aware of which materials are beneficial to recycle and which aren’t. The government is just working for lobbyists with an uninformed or blatantly wrong agenda. There are times when producing new goods and materials are cheaper and more beneficial than having to recycle them. The corporations are going to do what is best to maximize their profits. Capitalism in and of itself is anti-waste. Let them make the best decisions for their company and stay the fuck out of the way.

9. The Devilish Promoter of Greed:

It is often said that capitalism is the promoter of greed. Do I need to refer to Gordon Gekko’s Oscar-winning “greed is good” speech from the amazing 1987 film ‘Wall Street’? No? Well, to this argument I say, “so fucking what?” Is greed really a bad thing? Sure, greed can lead people down a road of doing underhanded and shitty things in an effort to make more money, but this goes back to my long section on corporations and individuals.

The point is, is that greed has created much more than it has destroyed. That’s the reality that your liberal professors don’t want you to know. Greed has fathered more innovation and more progress than any other conceivable factor one can come up with. To argue against this is fucking ludicrous and completely and utterly pointless. Without greed, we’d all still be cave dwellers chewing on bark!

Throughout history, whenever a scientist or an inventor said that they were trying to better mankind and the world, I’m sure they were telling the truth. However, it was the fattening of their wallet that gave them that motivation. Whether it was greed for money, fame, success or just general notoriety, doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that greed was the catalyst.

Why do you get up every morning? You get up to make money. It doesn’t matter if you desire to make money for yourself, your family or to buy a nicer car. The point is: money is your motivator. To deny that fact is just ignorant and pretty fucking arrogant, especially, when each and every one of us would be happy to receive more money.

Now some of you may feel like you have enough and are fine with what you’ve got. That’s admirable, a bit lame and borderline moronic, but admirable. Anyway, are you telling me that you wouldn’t take more money? It isn’t something you necessarily have to use on yourself but if you’re the charitable type, which I personally feel should be everyone, isn’t there a lot you could do with that money? I’m posing this question without implying what the source of the money could be, just assume in this example that it is legit and clean money. Wouldn’t you use it for something positive?

See, I understand the guy who doesn’t want to take money from a shady source or cash that came from some sort of criminal activity. There is nothing wrong with putting morals before prosperity for some people and I respect that, as I too wouldn’t take a couple grand from a hypothetical drug dealer to use on whatever I saw fit. However, as far as earning an honest living and doing what it takes to maximize your profits, that is what makes the world go ‘round kiddos. Greed is the creator: love it or hate it. As Junior M.A.F.I.A. said back in ‘95, “Get Money!”

10. In Conclusion:

There are many more subjects I could tackle in regards to capitalism and the anti-capitalistic mentality but this article has already surpassed epic proportions. As I am confronted with other issues and examples I will continue to write on the subject. The first sentence in this article was: Capitalism: it is a word that for some means freedom, prosperity and the answer to all of our economic woes. Hopefully now, you understand and see why.

Take what was written here if you must and go do your own research. If you approach the subject objectively and honestly, your doubts and fears about capitalism will be greatly diminished. However, if you want to be a jackass twatbag, keep believing the lies of your coffee shop heroes and your unionized teachers. Point blank: capitalism is butter baby!

“Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him.” – Ayn Rand

*Taken from the Washington Post.

The financial crisis stretched even farther across the economy than many had realized, as new disclosures show the Federal Reserve rushed trillions of dollars in emergency aid not just to Wall Street but also to motorcycle makers, telecom firms and foreign-owned banks in 2008 and 2009.

The Fed’s efforts to prop up the financial sector reached across a broad spectrum of the economy, benefiting stalwarts of American industry includingGeneral Electric and Caterpillar and household-name companies such as Verizon, Harley-Davidsonand Toyota. The central bank’s aid programs also supported U.S. subsidiaries of banks based in East Asia, Europe and Canada while rescuing money-market mutual funds held by millions of Americans.

The biggest users of the Fed lending programs were some of the world’s largest banks, includingCitigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Swiss-based UBS and Britain’s Barclays, according to more than 21,000 loan records released Wednesday under new financial regulatory legislation.

The data reveal banks turning to the Fed for help almost daily in the fall of 2008 as the central bank lowered lending standards and extended relief to all kinds of institutions it had never assisted before.

Fed officials emphasize that their actions were meant to stabilize a financial system that was on the verge of collapse in late 2008. They note that the actions worked to prevent a complete financial meltdown and that none of the special lending programs has lost money. (Some have recorded healthy profits for taxpayers.)

But the extent of the lending to major banks – and the generous terms of some of those deals – heighten the political peril for a central bank that is already under the gun for a wide range of actions, including a recent decision to try to stimulate the economy by buying $600 billion in U.S. bonds.

“The American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed’s multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America,” said Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a longtime Fed critic whose provision in the Wall Street regulatory overhaul required the new disclosures. “Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations. As a result of this disclosure, other members of Congress and I will be taking a very extensive look at all aspects of how the Federal Reserve functions.”

The Fed launched emergency programs totaling $3.3 trillion in aid, a figure reached by adding up the peak amount of lending in each program.

Companies that few people would associate with Wall Street benefited through the Fed’s program to ease the market for commercial paper, a form of short-term debt used by major corporations to fund their daily activities.

By the fall of 2008, credit had frozen across the financial system, including the commercial paper market. The Fed then purchased commercial paper issued by GE 12 times for a total of $16 billion. It bought paper from Harley-Davidson 33 times, for a total of $2.3 billion. It picked up debt issued by Verizon twice, totaling $1.5 billion.

“It is hard to say what would have happened without the facility, and how its absence might have affected GE, but overall the program was extremely effective in helping stabilize the market,” GE spokesman Russell Wilkerson said by e-mail.

Verizon spokesman Robert A. Varettoni said that it was “an extraordinary time,” adding that there was no credit available otherwise at the time.

The data revealed that the Fed continued making purchases into the summer of 2009 – after the official end of the recession – showing that it was still concerned about a fundamental part of the financial system even as economic growth was returning.

The disclosure shows “how really profound the financial crisis was in the fall of 2008 and the firepower the Fed mustered in response,” said analyst Karen Shaw Petrou of Federal Financial Analytics.

Foreign-owned banks also benefited from the Fed’s commercial-paper facility. The Korean Development Bank, owned by the South Korean government, used the program to the tune of billions of dollars, including a $407 million short-term loan on a single day. Many foreign banks, including the French BNP Paribas, the Swiss UBS and the German Deutsche Bank, took extensive advantage of various programs. Even a major bank in Bavaria benefited, as well as another one headquartered in Bahrain, a tiny island country in the Middle East.

Another Fed program allowed investment banks for the first time to borrow directly from the Fed as officials sought to stem the panic that had taken down Wall Street titan Bear Stearns. The central bank assisted 18 companies through this program. Among the biggest beneficiaries was Citigroup, which in a single day in November 2008 borrowed $18.6 billion from the Fed.

The data also demonstrate how the Fed, in its scramble to keep the financial system afloat, eventually lowered its standards for the kind of collateral it allowed participating banks to post. From Citigroup, for instance, it accepted $156 million in triple-C collateral or lower – grades that indicate that the assets carried the greatest risk of default.

Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher defended the Fed’s actions during the financial crisis, saying the central bank “stepped into the breach” in its role as a lender of last resort.

“That’s what we are paid to do,” he said. “We took an enormous amount of risk with the people’s money,” he acknowledged. But the crisis lending programs are now all closed, he said, “and we didn’t lose a dime, and in fact we made money on every one of them.”

The banks universally hailed the Fed on Wednesday.

“In late 2008, many of the US funding markets were clearly broken,” Goldman Sachs said in a statement, echoing similar comments made by Bank of America and Citigroup. “The Federal Reserve took essential steps to fix these markets and its actions were very successful.”

By 2009, Goldman and other Wall Street firms were reporting their best profits ever. That allowed these banks to pay out huge salaries again, but it also drew the ire of lawmakers and ordinary Americans.

Sanders, for one, said these banks got off easy while receiving extraordinary aid. In rescuing these firms, the Fed never required them to lend to small businesses, modify the mortgages of homeowners or invest in a way that would create jobs.

“We bailed these guys out, but the requirements placed upon them had very little positive impact on the needs of ordinary Americans,” Sanders said.