MOTHER OF ALL "STINGS"
by Graham Strachan
PHOENIX - Since this is Graham Strachan's first contribution to the
Truth in Media, let us introduce this Australian writer to you. He
was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, in 1941, and has
degrees in Biological Science and Law. He has worked in large
companies, has been a production management consultant, a
practicing lawyer, and a professional jazz pianist. Strachan
currently devotes his time to researching and writing articles and
books on politics and philosophy. His first book was "Economic
Rationalism: a Disaster for Australia" (1997), and his second,
recently released, is titled "Globalisation: Demise of the
Australian
Nation."
And now, on to the Strachan's "Sting"...
BRISBANE, Australia - Readers familiar with the motion picture
"The Sting" may recall that the cornerstone of the successful
'Sting' (fraud) was that the victim had to be unaware at the end of
it
all that they had been defrauded. Even if told, they would refuse to
believe they had been dudded (conned).
In the case of "The Sting" - the movie, the philosophy of the
leading
characters was that fools and their money are easily parted. The
people they were defrauding had money to lose in the first place.
Such is not the case of the greatest fraud of all time presently
taking place in the global economy, and the 'fools' being parted
from their money are the simple, basically decent, trusting,
ordinary people of the world, who are obliged to work for a living.
The Sting goes something like this. Over a trillion dollars zooms
around the world each day in the global markets, buying and
selling currencies, corporate shares and government bonds,
'futures' (options to buy things which might come into being in the
future), and 'derivatives', instruments based on some underlying
financial asset, however remotely.
Some of the money (not much) actually gets to be invested in
productive enterprise, but most of it is used by speculators playing
a huge global gambling game. The media, now staffed by capitalist
groupies paid to glorify these people, fawn over the speculators and
call them 'players'. Life is but a game, tra-la. Greed is good.
The sting is made possible because most of the 'money' the
'players' gamble with doesn't actually exist. It's pretend money,
credit money extended to them by various banks, and ultimately
the international bankers. The banks are able to do this... invent
imaginary money out of thin air and charge interest on it....
because of the 'fractional reserve banking system' whereby if a
bank has around $6 of depositors funds in its vault it is allowed by
law to create $100 of imaginary money and lend it out at interest.
Banks do not, as Prime Minister Howard apparently thinks (or says
he does), lend depositors funds. They don't lend money at all. They
extend credit, which is new 'money' created as interest bearing
debt, a practice called 'usury' and banned by the Church during the
Middle Ages, but allowed back in by Henry VIII. But back to the
Sting.
At this point the media enter the picture, media owned and
controlled by men who are themselves ultimately beholden to the
international bankers. An area is targeted, like Asia. The world
media then talk the area up. They run stories about 'Asian Tiger
Economies', and how the 'future lies in Asia', fortunes are there
for
the asking.
The global speculators are encouraged to invest their hot money
there by the billions, in all sorts of ventures regardless of the
risk,
and in assets regardless of how dubious their value. At the same
time the local banks in the target country are encouraged to borrow
from the international bankers and make reckless loans, hardly
bothering to assess the viability of ventures or requiring adequate
collateral. The myth is promoted that it's almost impossible to fail
in the 'emerging economies'.
Then a crisis is precipitated: the spill of an ageing President, for
example, something to spook the speculators and induce them to
dump the local currency and pull out. If the worst comes to the
worst a deliberate 'run' on the currency can be arranged using the
massive global hedge funds (as in the Thai collapse).
What happens then is a massive flight of capital from the target
country, and a devaluation of its currency in the floating money
market, because nobody wants to be caught short with it. As the
currency value plummets, the local banks cannot service their
overseas loans which are tied to the value of the US dollar. They
call in their own loans but by this time the country's economy is so
depressed by the flight of capital that the local borrowers can't
meet their obligations. What is euphemistically called in banking
circles the 'non-performing loan' becomes a local plague. The local
banks then look like collapsing.
At this point the debt collector for the international
money-lenders,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is sent in to 'review' the
situation, and to recommend a 'bailout package'. The pretext is 'to
prop up the country's economy', but what that really means is bail
out the country's private banks. And where does the money for the
'bailout' come from?
This is where politicians in quasi-democratic governments like
Australia's join the Sting team. In munificent mode they 'pledge'
billions of dollars of their taxpayers' hard-earned money... real
money, backed up by sweat....to the IMF to bail out the profligate
bankers in the target country. Losses by private bankers, who
deserve to be driven out of business by the 'free market' they claim
to espouse, are made good by hard-working taxpayers in the
developed (G-7) countries. So much for the 'free market'. It's all
part
of the scam.
The governments who pledge their taxpayers' money don't actually
deliver it in cash. They borrow it from the international bankers at
interest, thereby increasing the national debt, ultimately repayable
by taxpayers or through the sale of national assets like Telstra and
the Snowy Mountains Scheme. In the meantime there's the
interest.
The interest on Australia's debt now costs the country's taxpayers
around $1.4 million an HOUR. The essence of the fraud is that
imaginary money borrowed from the international bankers and 'lost'
by irresponsible local bankers, is 'bailed out' with real money and
assets stolen from the world's taxpayers by their own governments.
It is fraud and slavery on a massive scale, a scale so massive
nobody would ever believe it was deliberate.
It began when the value of money was severed from the gold
standard by America in 1968. This enabled almost unlimited credit
'money' to be created. The precedent for using public funds to
make up private bank losses was established when the Clinton
administration bailed out the Mexican 'economy' (i.e banks) with
$40 billion US taypayers' dollars in 1995. That removed the last
source of discipline from the global markets....the possibility of
making a loss.
As Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises
Institute in Auburn, Alabama wrote recently, it sent a message that
bad debts could be protected from exposure to market forces if the
gamblers involved had good government connections. Then they
stand the chance of having their bills paid with other people's
money.
The Mexican Sting was followed by a $141 billion bailout in Asia, to
which Australian taxpayers were made to contribute around $5
billion. Then Russia had to be bailed out to the tune of $20 billion
in
1998 alone. Now there is a possible $30 billion required for Brazil,
and thereafter who knows? Japan, China, and probably Mexico
again.
To make sure the victims don't wake up that they are being
defrauded, the sole purpose now of the Western media is to keep
the people ignorant, to prevent them understanding anything of any
consequence, to keep them in the dark or distracted with sex,
sport, and the private lives of people like Princess Diana.
Economics is portrayed as being beyond human comprehension,
even of the best brains in the world. It's 'just happening'. Like
the
weather.
No it's not. This is fraud on a global scale: the milking of captive
taxpayers by scoundrels with the help of paid liars in government
and the media. Watch now for calls for a World Central Bank,
which will create what American writer Anne Williamson, writing for
the Internet news site WorldNetDaily, has described as "one global
money monopoly that will be a final claim on [taxpayers'] national
sovereignty and their wallets". She describes the world's taxpayers
as 'the world's unwitting bottomless purse'. The object is "to
socialise the risks of reckless banking amongst the [world's]
population, while allowing the profits to be retained by, and then
shared out amongst the political and economic elite".
As Doctor Goebbels said, if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big
one,
then nobody will believe it's a lie. The same goes for fraud. Do it
on
a global scale, and who would ever believe it was a Sting?
----------
Graham Strachan's e-mail is: bizbrief@overflow.net.au; some of his
articles can also be found at: overflow.net.au
or at gwb.com.au
<nofill>
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