I would like to introduce you, the reader, to some realities of our global banking system, resting on the rhetoric of free markets, but functioning, in actuality, as a global cartel, a “super-entity� in which the world’s major banks all own each other and own the controlling shares in the world’s largest multinational corporations, influence governments and policy with politicians in their back pockets, routinely engaging in fraud and bribery, and launder hundreds of billions of dollars in drug money, not to mention arms dealing and terrorist financing. These are the “too big to fail� and “too big to jail� banks, the center of our global economy, what we call a “free market,� implying that the global banks – and corporations – have “free reign� to do anything they please, engage in blatantly criminal activities, steal trillions in wealth which is hidden offshore, and never get more than a slap on the wrist. This is the real “free market,� a highly profitable global banking cartel, functioning as a worldwide financial Mafia.

Scientific Research Proves the Existence of a Global Financial “Super-Entity�

In October of 2011, New Scientist reported that a scientific study on the global financial system was undertaken by three complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. The conclusion of the study revealed what many theorists and observers have noted for years, decades, and indeed, even centuries: “An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.â€� As one of the researchers stated, “Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it’s conspiracy theories or free-market… Our analysis is reality-based.â€� Using a database which listed 37 million companies and investors worldwide, the researchers studied all 43,060 trans-national corporations (TNCs), including the share ownerships linking them.[1] Read more È

“God bless God damn London, the Parasites Paradise!�

Whenever financial swindlers prosper at the expense of investors or bank jiggers interest rates to bugger their competitors or tax evaders flee fiscal crises or rent gouging petrol monarchies recycle profits or oligarchs pillage economies and drive millions to drink, drugs and destitution they find a suitable secure sanctuary in London.

They are wooed and pursued by big British realtors eager to sell them multi-million dollar estates, trophy properties and landmark mansions. Pompous and pretentious British academics convince them to send their progeny to six digit private schools, promising them that when they graduate they will be speaking English through their nasal cavities, rolling their r’s and mastering the art of eloquent but vacuous elocution. British governments, Labor Liberal and Conservative, in the best and most hypocritical legal traditions, fashion the legal loopholes to attract the biggest and wealthiest parasites of the world.

Crime Wave Sweeps City of London

A veritable crime wave[1] has invaded the City of London, where millionaire investment bankers cook the books for billionaire clients and bilk the Treasury to pay their fines and flout the Law. Courses in business ethics are obligatory at Oxford and Cambridge since it has become standard operating procedure for mega-swindlers to plead guilty ,to pay a fine and avoid jail and to solemnly promise to never, ever, flout the law….. until the next mega-deal. Read more È

Benjamin Franklin, Rolling Over In His Grave

The amount of U.S. currency circulating outside banks rose sharply in July/August 2001.  The growth ran into the billions of dollars, and was concentrated in $100 bills.  These large-scale currency movements matter for anyone who cares about learning the truth about 9/11.

Under money laundering and other laws, assets can be frozen and seized in the banking system.  Knowing this, parties concerned that their assets might be frozen or otherwise at risk after 9/11 would have had an incentive to liquidate securities and banking accounts beforehand, and withdraw their money in difficult-to-trace ways.  This could have happened in U.S. banking and securities accounts, as well as accounts denominated in U.S. dollars outside the United States.  Finding the parties responsible for large-scale withdrawals of currency before 9/11 could help identify people aware of, if not responsible for, those events.

A banking crisis in Argentina can provide a relatively innocent explanation for the mid-2001 surge in currency shipments, at least in part.  But we still have no evidence of an honest, thorough investigation into other possible reasons for those shipments, reasons related to the crimes of September 11, 2001.  And the mid-2001 currency shipments to Argentina are worthy of 9/11 investigation, as well.

A third explanation has gained greater plausibility following recent 9/11 research.  Currency has a long history in covert operations.  Accelerated covert or other military action in Central Asia soon before 9/11 could have played a role in those mid-2001 currency shipments. Read more È

Mainstream Media – Actually On a Case?

In the previous article in this series, we provided a brief review of the long train of corruption cases in Chicago and Illinois, and how they provide valuable perspective for some compelling national and international issues. 
Earlier this week, we had two indications that some elements of the City that Works may actually be working in a good way, and on matters related to international terrorism, drug trafficking, corruption in the city, state, and federal governments, and even the events of September 11, 2001.

On November 1, the Chicago Tribune reported how the City of Chicago’s “Corporation Counsel,� Stephen Patton, responded to a question about a dispute over the authority of the City Inspector General, Joseph Ferguson.  Ferguson has faced noncompliance with subpoenas he has issued to the city.  New mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Corporation Counsel has argued to the State Supreme Court that the city has the authority to enforce these subpoenas, not the inspector general alone, and the city also holds sole authority to hire outside counsel in matters at issue. 

This article did not identify any of the specific cases for which subpoena demands had been rebuffed.  But the fact that the City Inspector General has been issuing them is alone room for optimism. Read more È

The Ultra Secret FBI Criminal Files in the Chicago Field Office

In the first edition of their series of reports on corruption in Chicago, University of Illinois professors Thomas Gradel, Dick Simpson and Andris Zimelis included a good discussion of the evolution of machine politics over time.  They looked at the period with Mayor Richard J. Daley (1955-1976), as well as an equally-lengthy interval with his son, Richard M. Daley, serving as mayor (1989-2011).  The earlier regime drew its authority primarily from entrenched ties with ethnic communities, while the latter evolved a more sophisticated set of relationships with a variety of supporters including unions, corporations, and other special interest groups.  The report from the University of Illinois professors was written in early 2009, on the heels of the indictment of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.  And after listing a long train of successful convictions, they concluded simply that “corruption continues unabated in city, county, suburbs and state today.� 

The authors have gone on to write four more updates to this report, which are all available here.  The fourth edition was released in early 2011, following the last Daley term and the passing of the torch to new Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  This fourth report listed over 340 city officials convicted in public corruption cases in the past few decades, with little sign of any slowing in recent years.  The authors listed cases of “bribery, patronage, contract rigging, conflict of interest, nepotism/family ties, clout, and theft,� noting that they were pervasive across a range of agencies.

Chicagoans can be thankful for some prosecutors, but the “City that Works� and the state and federal government functions dealing with it haven’t earned a presumption of innocence.  A careful, cautious and even cynical perspective is warranted when considering the prospects for reform under new Mayor Rahm Emanuel, especially in light of the strong ties that helped lay the basis for his political career in recent decades.

And while thinking about the Chicago political environment and its relevance for the case of Sibel Edmonds, it is useful to be careful about distinctions between the two main parties in our political system.  We have Democrats and Republicans, on the one hand, and the rest of us, on the other hand.  The long train of scandals and convictions such as those laid out by the University of Illinois professors have entrenched bi-partisan roots, with Democrats as well as Republicans breeding disenchantment and suspicion.  The Edmonds case reaches across party lines, as well. Read more È

Burrowing Into Some Rabbit Holes

Chicago has a lot of strengths, along with a deserved, well, reputation. The City of Big Shoulders?  Perhaps.  But legal and illegal corruption have long greased the wheels in the City That Works.  Chicago is joined at the hip with the State of Illinois, with no shortage of its own symptoms.  Paul Powell, an Illinois Secretary of State who passed away while in office in 1970, just before $800,000 in cash (nearly $5 million in today’s dollars, given the inflation since then) was found stuffed in a shoebox and other places in his hotel room, along with 49 cases of whiskey.  George Ryan, a former governor still in jail on corruption convictions.  And they don’t seem to learn.  Rod Blagojevich was elected to the governor’s seat after Ryan, and Blagojevich now stands to be sentenced following his conviction on corruption charges earlier this year.

The longer-term financial consequences arising when public institutions are used to fleece the public can be seen in the fiscal status of the City of Chicago, as well as the Land of Lincoln.  Last year, interest rates and credit default swap costs for Illinois state debt climbed above California, suggesting the market considered Illinois the worst credit quality among the 50 United States.

The latest nasty recession hasn’t helped, but long-festering inefficiency and corruption have been a major factor in financial deterioration.  A recent study led by Dick Simpson of the University of Illinois/Chicago estimated costs of $350 million a year in Chicago arising simply from waste, theft, patronage, nepotism and contract rigging.  And speaking of waste, an illuminating symbol comes from the cost of garbage disposal in Chicago.  A recent Wall Street Journal article reviewed the city’s finances, and found Chicagoans paying far higher costs per ton of garbage disposed than any other city in the country, nearly twice as much as the second highest.

 

In light of the environment, and the seeming inability of public institutions to reform after scandal after scandal, the prospects for ethical and cultural renewal in Chicago in the new administration led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel might best be viewed cautiously. 

Here’s another reason for caution on that score.

A 2009 article/interview published in The American Conservative summarized some of Sibel Edmonds’ testimony in a court case in Ohio.  This venue allowed her to speak about topics where this former FBI translator had been silenced by a dubious legal constraint called the ‘state secrets privilege.’  The 2009 article included shocking material about corruption and influence peddling.  And the city of Chicago was surprisingly prominent, given the scope of her material. 

Edmonds closed her 2009 article / interview with the following observations:

As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.

The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.

In our coming series, we are going crawl into a few of these rabbit holes.

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The Boiling Frogs Presents Bill Bergman

Bill Bergman joins us to discuss compelling financial irregularities and cases involving pre-9/11 money transfers, suspicious activity reporting, and informed securities trading, all of which remain uninvestigated and unanswered to date. He provides us with his analyses of the extraordinary surge in currency shipments and significant increase in the number of suspicious activity reports filed by financial institutions in the summer of 2001, the long history of currency shipments in U.S. covert operations, documented false statements and conclusions by the 9/11 Commission regarding the National Money Laundering Strategy Report from the Department of the Treasury in 2001, and the performance of the ‘market fear index’ in the weeks before 9/11. Mr. Bergman discusses obstacles and climate of fear faced by public servants, the city of Chicago as the major hub for money laundering, narcotics and corruption, and more!

Bill Bergman has 10 years of experience as a stock market analyst sandwiched around 13 years as an economist and financial markets policy analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He earned an M.B.A. as well as an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Chicago in 1990. His research work at the Fed included writing the Chicago Fed contribution to the Federal Reserve “beige book.” Some recent issue areas he has worked on include the implications national emergency and war powers pose for the Federal Reserve, money laundering, and wholesale payment system design, risk, performance and pricing. Mr. Bergman is currently working with Social Movement Sciences LLC, a new enterprise developing evaluation and funding services for not-for-profit organizations.

Here is our guest Bill Bergman unplugged!

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The Power(s) Behind Afghan Heroin & the Real Profiteers of the International Drug Trade 

The idea that the drug trade in Afghanistan is enabled and protected by western interests for their own benefit is by no means a new or controversial idea. After all, we are talking about the third most lucrative commodity in the world behind oil and the arms trade. However, the media coverage of this issue involving hundreds of billions of dollars is another story. James Corbett brings to you questions and points not dared to be raised by the media and pseudo alternatives alike.

This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett on Afghanistan’s White Gold for boilingfrogspost.com

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