Interview Between Bill Moyers and William Greider With Additional Commentary by James Jaeger
BILL MOYERS: As you know, earlier this week Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner proposed a vast expansion of government authority that would crack down hard on Wall Street's reckless behavior. Just in time, it seems. You could almost hear the mob in the streets of Washington as he spoke. Popular anger was beginning to evoke unhappy images among Washington elites of the French Revolution, guillotine and all. On the Op-Ed page of Sunday's "Washington Post," William Greider, the veteran political reporter of four decades, suggested a glass half full. He wrote that the public's rage "has great potential for restoring a functioning democracy. Timely intervention by the people could save the country from some truly bad ideas now circulating in Washington and on Wall Street." Perhaps no journalist better understands the intertwining twists and turns of government and money, the collision of capitalism and democracy, than William Greider. He wrote the definitive account of the Federal Reserve system, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE.JAMES JAEGER: Huh, there is no "collision" between democracy and FREE-MARKET capitalism. Actually G. Edward Griffin wrote the definitive account of the Federal Reserve System, THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND. Are you going to also interview Mr. Griffin?
BILL MOYERS: In the spirit of Thomas Paine he produced, WHO WILL TELL THE PEOPLE? Followed it with, THE SOUL OF CAPITALISM. And now, COME HOME, AMERICA: THE RISE AND FALL (AND REDEEMING PROMISE) OF OUR COUNTRY.
JAMES JAEGER: Actually comparing Greider with Paine is like comparing a powder-puff with a knife.
BILL MOYERS: Bill Greider, welcome back to the Journal.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Thank you, Bill.
BILL MOYERS: We saw Secretary Geithner on Monday. We saw President Obama on Tuesday night. We saw Secretary Geithner again on Thursday. And the storyline seems to be, we're going to get tough on the financial industry. Your old newspaper, "The Washington Post," says, calls it, "A sweeping expansion of Federal authority of the financial system. A rebuke of raw capitalism, and a reassertion that regulation is critical to the healthy function of financial markets." That's the storyline as I read the week, but if you read between the lines, what's missing?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Well, among other things that are missing from that story is that we had the rules and regulations, the agencies created some 80 years ago and afterwards to prevent this sort of catastrophe. And these same political players, Republicans and Democrats holding hands, stripped them away, eviscerated them. The same agencies these reformers want to put in power to prevent this from happening again. Starting with the Federal Reserve, the Securities Exchange Commission, other regulators, utterly failed in their duty to do that. Now, we're going to give them new power.
JAMES JAEGER: This makes no sense. Unfortunately Greider doesn't understand the roll and distinct agenda of the following entities:
1. Congress;
2. The Federal Reserve;
3. Regulatory agencies created by Congress (e.g., SEC);
4. The Democrats;
6. The Republicans;
7. The mega bank and multinational corporations;
8. The Administration;
9. Treasury;
10. The Government.Since he fails to understand how 1 - 10 are similar, identical and different, he presents an impossibly inconsistent view of the game of politics and economics. No where is this more evident than in his book, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE. SOUL OF CAPITALISM, however, DID have much good information in it however.
WILLIAM GREIDER: I'm offering a breath of skepticism toward this grand transformation of government.
JAMES JAEGER: Pseudo-skepticism?
WILLIAM GREIDER: I don't want to be a cynic, but it feels more to me like trying to restore the old order that failed.
JAMES JAEGER: Then why do you say "we had the rules and regulations, the agencies created some 80 years ago and afterwards to prevent this sort of catastrophe" implying that we HAD proper regulation, the elite mega banks and corps eroded this regulation (SEC, Glass-Steagall, etc) and now we have a catastrophe. So what's wrong with restoring what prevented the catastrophe? Here's a perfect example of powder-puff thinking, thinking designed to throw confusion into the discussion about the Fed and free-market capitalism.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And I mean by that these big mega banks that had been liberated by deregulation to do as they pleased and the other rules that were undermined.
JAMES JAEGER: To say that a bank is "liberated" by deregulation to "do as it pleases" implies it was set free to do bad things. But then to say that deregulation was "undermined" implies that this liberation was a good thing.
WILLIAM GREIDER: I think this President, and I'm a big fan of this President, but I think his first priority seems to be to recreate those institutions which, some of which are now insolvent, as healthy again.
JAMES JAEGER: Why the sudden jump in subject?! Is the subject whether or not to keep the AGENCIES that are responsible for regulation OR is the subject whether or not to keep the big BANKS and CORPORATIONS. You are all over the place with this powder-puff thinking and "communication."
WILLIAM GREIDER: And actually it's quite scary, because unless they set about to make much more fundamental changes, I fear we will, sure enough, get this back again.
JAMES JAEGER: Oh, so you are saying that the old regulations, such as Glass-Steagall need to be reinstated but go farther? In other words we need MORE regulation that even New Deal regulation?
BILL MOYERS: Were you thinking that when you watched Secretary Geithner yesterday? Thursday, when he presented this, what seems to be a sweeping reform of the regulatory system?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Well, in fairness to the Secretary, you can't really know until he fills in the blanks. And, of course, there were no-- like his earlier pronouncements, there weren't enough details to really actually know quite what he's doing. He said, I'm not going to decide who is in charge of the universe in protecting us from what they call systemic risk. I think it's pretty well understood in Washington that the Administration and the Treasury Secretary would like to give this to the Federal Reserve.
JAMES JAEGER: The Administration and the Treasury ARE the Administration. Again, you have problems with terminals 1 - 10 Mr. Greider.
WILLIAM GREIDER: The Federal Reserve, as many people know, is a sort of unique cloistered institution of government that is insulated from political accountability.
JAMES JAEGER: This is a false characterization of what the Federal Reserve is. The Federal Reserve is a quasi-private, government-sanctioned banking cartel. It's not really insulated from political accountability because it's a CREATION of Congress and a PARTNER with Congress. It's also a VEHICLE Congress uses to create money out of thin air when raising taxes would be an unpopular thing to do (as if it's ever a popular thing to do). Thus the Fed is actually an example of Congress FARMING OUT their Constitutional responsibilities under Article I and then looking the other way when the Federal Reserve System does things that are unconstitutional, such as remove us from the Gold Standard. I note how we don't hear any of the following words come out of the author of the "definitive account of the Federal Reserve system":
1. Constitution;
2. Fiat currency;
3. Article I;
4. Gold Standard;
5. Fractional Reserve Banking;
6. Elastic currency;
7. Monetary inflation.JAMES JAEGER: Terms 1 - 7 are arguably the most pivotal terms in connection with a study of the money system, banking and the Federal Reserve System, yet the "expert" has OMITTED all of them. What kind of an "authority" can Mr. Greider actually be? Seems to me that Mr. Greider is more of a disinformation agent than an unbiased researcher/author. A disinformation agent is an intellectual that's hired, and/or paid and/or promoted by the Establishment, and/or by Establishment mouth pieces, such as a Bill Moyers on a PBS show like NOW. Such agents focus the public's attention on false or irrelevant issues and "opinion leaders" that put out books, articles, shows, documentaries, surveys, "science" and arguments that do one or all of the following:
1. Confuse the issues;
2. Rebut actual authorities on the subject;
3. Fill the vacuum with straw arguments;
4. Misdirect the public debate;
5. Re-prioritize the issues;
6. Invalidate rational thought and research.The team of Greider and Moyers are providing all six of these functions.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And usually (the Fed is), quite secretive.
JAMES JAEGER: Finally Greider says something that's true about the Fed! But that's exactly what the dis-information agent does. He injects just enough truth on a subject to garner respect from the intelligent, but naive lay-person, and then he steers the popular opinion AWAY from any solution that would require the removal of those in power responsible for the non-optimum conditions or unjust enrichment.
WILLIAM GREIDER: That's for starters. And my accusation, not just in this book but previously is that it tipped its favor hard in favor of capitalism and against labor over the last 25-30 years.
JAMES JAEGER: True.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And became a kind of cheerleader, actually, under Allen Greenspan for the all the excesses and so called modernization that are now in ruin.
JAMES JAEGER: Greenspam was just doing his job, working for the bank cartel.
WILLIAM GREIDER: So, just as a matter of logic, why would we want to give more power to a governing institution that was already supposed to defend the quote safety and soundness of the system.
JAMES JAEGER: True.
BILL MOYERS: But if the Administration turns to the Fed for help, it means it does not have to go through Congress, right? Because the Fed is not regulation.
JAMES JAEGER: The Fed is a CREATURE of Congress. If the Obama Administration goes to the Fed, it is actually going TO a CREATURE of Congress for its help. Technically, this is what the Administration would be doing: In order to help regulate the elite banks and the "corporations that have grown up around them," the President's Administration would go to the Congressionally-sanctioned cartel OF elite banks and this cartel will steer things "right" so that We the People are happy. Can anyone see how ridiculous this is because of all the conflicts of interest. The wolf guarding the chicken coop: The Fed (a cartel of elite banks) guarding the public from the elite banks.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Well, that's, I mean, that's one of the attractive qualities about the Fed is that it is this black box of technocratic expertise.
JAMES JAEGER: Huh?! That's an "attractive" quality? This is pure powder-puff Greider.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And it knows things the rest of us don't know. And it's very expert at what it does.
JAMES JAEGER: Yes, the Fed IS quite expert at what it does: rob citizens of their money through the hidden tax of inflation; create money out of thin air (through fractional reserve); rent fiat money to its "too big to fail" buddies on Wall Street; monetize endless debt so that the entire world financial system is nothing more than a massive debt Ponzi; unjustly enrich an inner circle of member-bank stockholders and executives; cause and institutionalize the boom and bust cycles known as the "business cycle" so the wealthy an take advantage of the poor (see Donald Trump's latest promo piece on 'how you can now exploit this low real estate market').
But of course powder-puff Greider talks on NONE of this, and he's the expert on the Fed with his book, SECRETS OF THE TEMPLE?!
WILLIAM GREIDER: And there's actually some truth to that quality. But it's a political institution. It makes public decisions for the rest of us. And so, to pretend that it's above all, that is nonsense from the beginning. If you're a member of Congress, particularly at this moment. And you're a bit cynical yourself. You want to get this monkey off your back.
JAMES JAEGER: Yes, the Congress simply wants to go back to their "normal" partnership with the Fed robbing We the People of their prosperity and avoiding the Constitution.
WILLIAM GREIDER: This financial mess, and all of the scandals that keep recurring from the way the bankers are using our money, keep piling up. So, they want a quick solution that says, let's give it to the Fed.
JAMES JAEGER: Again, let's give the cartel better control over the cartel.
WILLIAM GREIDER: The Central Bank is trusted. It's wise.
JAMES JAEGER: Huh! It's trusted by who? It's only "trusted" because disinformation agents like YOU and apologist mainstream MEDIA like Moyers SAY it's trusted. In other words it's YOUR job to make We the People THINK it's trusted, when in fact the Fed is finally being seen as the SOURCE of the problem.
WILLIAM GREIDER: We'll let them deal with all this stuff. This not new, of course, they did that 100 years ago when they created the Federal Reserve. 1913, it was a kind of compromise between labor and capital.
JAMES JAEGER: No, it was the banks forming a cartel to take over the lender of last resort hat worn by J.P. Morgan who died the same year. It was also the banks setting up a cartel to thwart free-enterprise lending and use government power to ensure there would be little or no competition. Of course "definitive" expert, Greider, mentions none of this.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And it said, we'll take the money question, about inflation, deflation, financial crisis, out of the popular debate. And we'll put it in this respected institution.
JAMES JAEGER: So if the institution is so respected, how come the elite bankers that formed the Fed met in secrecy on Jekyll Island in 1910?
WILLIAM GREIDER: And over a century it worked for some periods. And for other periods the Federal Reserve, because it is so close to the major banks…
JAMES JAEGER: "so close to"? The Fed IS the major banks. It's a cartel OF the major banks.
WILLIAM GREIDER: did what it could to help those financial institutions. And I say, bluntly, betrayed its public obligation.
JAMES JAEGER: Of course. The Fed was formed by the banks and FOR the banks. So why would you have to say this "bluntly." Don't go out on a limb here Greider.
BILL MOYERS: Which was?
JAMES JAEGER: Oh, play dumb Moyers?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Which was to run the economy in a balanced fashion, protect it against excesses, on both sides. And be an honest decision maker of money and credit supply.
JAMES JAEGER: All while weaning us off the gold standard.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Which is the heart and soul of our system.
JAMES JAEGER: No, the gold standard was the heart and soul. Read Article I someday.
WILLIAM GREIDER: and in the last year- if you look at what happened, you don't have to be an expert on monetary policy to see this. Step back and look at what happened in the last 25 years, 30 years. An explosion of credit and debt and a valuation of everything from the Dow Jones to these exotic financial instruments went through the roof, while the wages incomes of ordinary Americans flat, even falling, but basically stagnant.
JAMES JAEGER: Well what else do you expect to happen when there is no redemption control over money?!
BILL MOYERS: In other words, you're saying that the Fed, charged to curb excesses, did not curb those excesses?
JAMES JAEGER: Duh, Moyers!
WILLIAM GREIDER: That's right.
JAMES JAEGER: Double duh!
BILL MOYERS: It just took the governor off.
JAMES JAEGER: Well.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And to put it more sympathetically, there are good reasons for that. Some of which were not the institution's fault. The mechanisms which it uses to control money and credit through the banking system-- that is the commercial banks, we all know were weakened by the deregulation.
JAMES JAEGER: Huh?! The mechanism that the Fed uses to "control money" is ELASTIC CURRENCY. The Fed monetizes DEBT and the Fed creates ACCOUNT money through the practice of fractional reserve. Deregulation had NOTHING to do with either of these, UNLESS you are talking about the DEREGULATION that occurred when we were phased OFF the Gold Standard between 1913 and 1971. But you are NOT talking about this, thus you are talking about NADA.
BILL MOYERS: I mean, it was both parties that were saying, "We want to deregulate." So, is it a collective guilt?
JAMES JAEGER: Well duh. The DEMS = the GOP = the DEMS. Both parties are PUPPETS of the CFR and Globalists.
WILLIAM GREIDER: It's the first impetus, which was genuine and unquestionable, was inflation in the 1970s.
JAMES JAEGER: 1971 was the year the criminal Nixon removed the last vestiges of the Gold Standard effectively declaring the U.S. was bankrupt by defaulted on our gold payments to the rest of the World. I guess this fact will never get mentioned on NOW.
BILL MOYERS: Paul Volker came in and-
WILLIAM GREIDER: The Paul Volker comes in to put a harsh stop to that. And he did, successfully. But taking the limits off interest rates, repealing the law against usury, allowing other firms to get in the game of lending in a much more substantial and uncontrolled way. All of those changes were driven by the laissez-faire ideology of the day. And we know-
JAMES JAEGER: The Volker-infested government was trying to control rising prices (inflation) of the 1970s by encouraging high interest rates yet at the same time encouraging competition in lending. Boy, these sure sound like the solutions to the dollar reaching equilibrium when the Gold Standard is abandoned. Maybe if the government didn't spend so much money on a WAR (Viet Nam) it would not have needed to monetize so much DEBT in order to PAY for that war and thus the purchasing power of the dollar would NOT have tanked, necessitating a reduction of the money supply through ARTIFICIALLY high interest rates, the kind CARTELS are especially good at controlling. Think OPEC and BIG OIL. Here's another perfect example of how government-Fed manipulation of interest rates does little more than perturb the equilibrium-seeking nature of the economy when it is unfettered. In essence, the dollar was week within the U.S. (due to no gold backing) and strong in the rest of the World (because it WAS redeemable in gold). But when Nixon removed the gold backing in foreign transactions, he reduced the purchasing power of the dollar around the rest of the World as well. Thus we had the double-digit inflation in the 1970s US and now we have the worst trade deficit in our history. The only reason we don't have BOTH is because we are EXPORTING our inflation. This can only continue however so long as the dollar is the de facto, World reserve currency.
BILL MOYERS: Government will be lazy, and everybody else will...
WILLIAM GREIDER: Will fair badly.
BILL MOYERS: Right. Right.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Well, yeah, and Democrats, not all of them, but in many ways-
BILL MOYERS: Not all Republicans, either.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Nor all Republicans, but both parties, on the whole, bought into this. And we- no need to question their sincerity. They bought into it. You might observe, in passing, that it also matched the desires of their patrons.
JAMES JAEGER: Their patrons being the corporate fascists that donate money to campaigns of BOTH parties. These corporate fascists, the "corporatocracy" that has hijacked Congress, WANT fiat money. But neither expert Greider or apologist Moyers mention this.
BILL MOYERS: Well-
WILLIAM GREIDER: Who were the big financial contributors to their campaigns. But even leaving that aside, this logic was, you know, compelling to lots of people. Some of us are, were sort of bag ladies on the street corner, waving our placards, "No, no, no, don't do this."
BILL MOYERS: As I listen to Secretary Geithner, I heard him say, well, Treasury's going be a tough cop on the beat. We're not just turning to the Fed. We're going to make this Treasury Department a champion of the people's interest, of the public interest. And we're going be a really tough cop on the beat. Do you believe him?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Unfortunately, Secretary Geithner, has a record- which we know about. When he was President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. And he was at the table, in many of the bailout transactions. First Bear Stearns then A.I.G. and others. And this is, again, not my opinion, but people on Wall Street talk about it all the time. He got spun around again and again by the big Wall Street players. The bailout of Bear Stearns was really about protecting J.P. Morgan Chase.
JAMES JAEGER: Because JP Morgan-Chase is probably the largest Fed-member bank and probably has the most control over the cartel (i.e., the Federal Reserve System).
WILLIAM GREIDER: The story was told backwards in the press, basically, because it's a story the government told that J.P. Morgan came in to buy Bear Stearns at the behest of the government. But in fact, if Bear Stearns had gone down, J.P. Morgan Chase was vulnerable itself to a wave of derivative crashing crisis. When they bailed out A.I.G., the chief executive of Goldman Sachs was in the room. Why was he in the room? Well, because he had big exposure to- through derivatives, to A.I.G. So, when they pump money into A.I.G., it sends the same dollars out and buys back these derivative contracts at par value, not even discounted, to the banks and others who hold them. Goldman Sachs gets $12 billion out of that transaction. This is another scandal waiting to surface. And I trust good, smart reporters are already on the case. And following the dollars that moved around among the leading financial institutions in ways that politicians could not have not known about it. It defies reason to think that Washington didn't know this was happening.
JAMES JAEGER: This is the cartel simply looking out for itself covertly and overtly using the power of government for special privileges. See FIAT EMPIRE at http://www.FiatEmpire.com.
BILL MOYERS: "The New York Times" on Thursday had this remarkable full page graph, based upon the excellent work of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group you're familiar with-
WILLIAM GREIDER: Yeah.
BILL MOYERS: That monitors money and politics. They said, where Wall Street trades in political currency, and if you look at this you realize that political connections may be the new currency for deal makers. Right? And it shows which of the financial elites have contributed to which elite politicians.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Oh, this is nice.
BILL MOYERS: What do ordinary citizens do about this? How do they break this grip that money has- the patrons have on the politicians?
JAMES JAEGER: Abolish the Federal Reserve.
WILLIAM GREIDER: They trust themselves.
JAMES JAEGER: Powder-puff answer.
WILLIAM GREIDER: I read a wonderful book about the Civil Rights Movement and SNICC and others in the South, in Mississippi, the most treacherous, backward place you could go, bring the issue of racial equality. And they said the organizers first goal was to learn to listen to these people, that they were poor blacks in Mississippi. The second goal was to convince themselves and these poor people to act like citizens even if- even though they knew they weren't citizens. And you think about that. That's kind of the mystery of democracy. People get power if they believe they're entitled to power.
BILL MOYERS: I read just this morning that there's a nation wide grassroots protest planned for April 11th.
WILLIAM GREIDER: I know some of those kids.
BILL MOYERS: You do?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Yeah, no, I'm excited by it.
BILL MOYERS: They're young people who want to take on banking reform, and reform the financial systems, as a campaign, an ongoing witness.
JAMES JAEGER: I suspect this is a straw reform group if Greider has anything to do with it.
WILLIAM GREIDER: I know. They call themselves A New Way Forward.
BILL MOYERS: New Way Forward.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And you can find them online. But I actually knew a couple of the organizers. I've been talking to them, for some years. And they're full of, you know, just... Young people are part of my optimism. They smart kids, want to be engaged in their times, see the injustices of their society. And they don't quite trust the great, big existing organizations. And with some good reason, as you know. And particularly, they're not totally sold on the Democratic Party as the vessel of reform.
JAMES JAEGER: Neither the Dems or the GOP are the answers, but the problem.
WILLIAM GREIDER: So they're now engaged in putting together the 11, 12, I'm sure they'd like to have 50, little bonfires around the country. These demonstrations. There's going be one in Washington and one in Wall Street, and a number of other cities. I think if people do those things with or without any help from big organizations, that collectively becomes the voice that tells Washington, we're on to your silly ideas that Wall Street wants you to do about reform. We see through them. And we have some ideas of our own. And we're going to come talk to you, and if you decline to talk to us, we're going to come after you. That's the voice of democracy speaking. When people say that.
BILL MOYERS: I hear that. But I also read your piece on "The Washington Post" last Sunday, in which you wrote, "Obama told us to speak out. But is he listening?" You ask. Well, is he?
WILLIAM GREIDER: I think he's... And I've been very enthusiastic about his opening as President. He did the stimulus package and a number of other things that's fulfilling his promise. On this, he does seem absolutely committed to restoration of the old order. There's no other way to say it. And this- these things Secretary Geithner is saying this week and others have been putting out, all confirm that. I think that's a huge mistake, financially. I don't- because I think these things are not going to work. And will, in fact, blow up in his face. Maybe a month from now. Or maybe six months, I don't know. But the handing out of government guarantees and capital to hedge funds and private equity funds. Financial institutions founded on secrecy, by the way. They're don't even pretend to be transparent. They're closed shops. Hands out that money, and then somewhere down the road people are going to learn that the investors, so called, are reaping 20 double digit returns on this money with almost no risk at all to themselves. And whether that works or not, people will be outraged. Again, as the returns come in. And I think should be. And outrage right now might just get the Congress to slow down a bit, calm down, we want reform, but we want it done right. And we want it done for the public interest, not for the old order.
BILL MOYERS: So, Obama, this week, has opened the hotline, one might say, the online hotline, to the White House. And said, give me your questions and we'll answer them. As of now over 100 thousand people have responded. Do you take that as an indication of what?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Popular anger.
BILL MOYERS: Popular anger?
WILLIAM GREIDER: Yeah. People get confused about this. Americans overwhelmingly want our President to succeed. And so do I. But that's not- the nature, is not, of democracy, authentically, is not simply supporting from the bleachers, and saying, gee, we hope you win the game. It's being on the field, engaged in whatever small or large way is possible. And expecting those elected representatives, including the President, to at least hear what you're saying, and if, and rightly, responding to it in some ways. That's the dynamic of a democratic society. And we know everybody knows in this country that this has now been, for some years not exclusively, but mainly a top down society. And you go into workplaces and hear the same things said as you hear about politics. Well, I know what's wrong here, but they won't listen to me. I don't have any voice in the matter. Or investors, small investors, putting their money in mutual funds. Well, they're not listening to me. Look who they're giving this money to. You know, you can go on and on. And that's what democracy is- would break.
BILL MOYERS: And I know that one of your deep concerns about the Fed, turning so much power over to the Fed, is that it is cozy with the big institutions. And that the smaller, entrepreneurial organizations and businesses that do not have access to the inner circle are excluded.
JAMES JAEGER: The problem isn't that the Fed is "cozy with the big institutions" the problem is that the Fed is in partnership with the Congress and together they create unconstitutional fiat money which is then "lent" at special rates to the "big institutions." Blame it all on the capitalist system but the capitalist system would work just fine if the Fed didn't exist and the government simply performed its duties as stipulated in the Constitution under Article I. But where does expert Greider mention any of this? Nowhere.
WILLIAM GREIDER: President Obama and if the Democratic leaders in Congress follow along, he'll put the Democratic Party on the wrong side of history. At this critical moment. What we ought to be seeking, the goal of reform, and government aid, is creating a new financial and banking system, of many more, thousands more, smaller, more diverse, regionally dispersed banks and investment firms. That's first obligation is to serve the economy and serve society. Not the other way around. What the administration's approach may be doing is consecrating too big to fail, for starters. Which, of course, everybody in government denied was the policy until the moment arrived. And secondly, and this will sound extreme to some people, but I came to it reluctantly. I fear what they're doing, not intentionally, but in their design is setting the crown for a corporate state.
JAMES JAEGER: When Greider says "corporate state" what he is avoiding saying is the more appropriate terms "corporatocracy" and "corporate fascism." See movie, ORIGINAL INTENT - How Cultural Marxism and Corporate Fascism are Undermining the U.S. Constitution, coming to a theater near you . See http://www.OriginalIntentUSA.org
BILL MOYERS: A corporate state?
JAMES JAEGER: Play dumb now Bill.
WILLIAM GREIDER: A corporate state. And by that I mean a rather small but very powerful circle of financial institutions the old Wall Street banks, famous names. But also some industrial corporations that bought banks. Or General Electric, which is already half of big financial capital, GE Capital. And that circle will be our new Wall Street club. Too big to fail. Yes, watched closely by the Federal Reserve and others in government,
JAMES JAEGER: Again, Greider has his MIS-information hat on. The Fed is a quasi-PRIVATE cartel of the banks. It's not an "other" in government. The Fed is NOT federal; it's basically PRIVATE. That's why it's Open Market Committee meetings are SECRET. That's why it's NOT listed in the blue pages in the TELEPHONE YELLOW PAGES.
WILLIAM GREIDER: but also protected by them. And that's a really insidious departure. To admit that and put it into law. And then think of all those thousands of smaller banks. How are they going to perform against these behemoths that have an inside track to the government spigot?
JAMES JAEGER: People should NOT bank or borrow from Fed-member banks. Just bank and borrow from the 6,000 or so independent banks around the nation. These are all FDIC-insured just as the 7,000 or so Fed-member banks.
WILLIAM GREIDER: And for just ordinary enterprise in general? Before you even get to the citizens. How are citizens supposed to feel about that? And I-- my point is, in this situation, with if the leading banks and corporations are sort of at the trough, ahead of everybody else in Washington, they will have the means to monopolize democracy. And I mean that literally. Some of my friends would say, hey, that already happened.
JAMES JAEGER: The Fed cartel was formed in 1913 so that the elite New York banks COULD issue and monopolize the money supply. We have been on the long road to corporate fascism since 1913. See Jefferson's warnings.
BILL MOYERS: Yeah, the corporate state is here.
JAMES JAEGER: Hey, we agree on something!
WILLIAM GREIDER: The corporate state is here. And I'd say, let's not argue over that. The fact is, if the Congress goes down the road I see them going down, they will institutionalize the corporate state in a way that will be severely damaging to any possibility of restoring democracy.
JAMES JAEGER: Unless We the People get back to Constitutional principles. But WHY don't either Greider OR Moyers SAY this? How come the word CONSTITUTION is not used even once in this entire interview by either GREIDER or MOYERS? Answer: Again, Mr. Greider is more of a disinformation agent than an unbiased researcher/author. A disinformation agent is an intellectual that's hired, and/or paid and/or promoted by the Establishment, and/or by Establishment mouth pieces, such as a Bill Moyers on a PBS show like NOW. Such agents focus the public's attention on false or irrelevant issues and "opinion leaders" that put out books, articles, shows, documentaries, surveys, "science" and arguments that do one or all of the following:
1. Confuse the issues;
2. Rebut actual authorities on the subject;
3. Fill the vacuum with straw arguments;
4. Misdirect the public debate;
5. Re-prioritize the issues;
6. Invalidate rational thought and research.The team of Greider and Moyers are providing all six of these functions. Also, note how you didn't hear any of the following words come out of Moyers OR the author of the "definitive account of the Federal Reserve system":
1. Constitution;
2. Fiat currency;
3. Article I;
4. Redeemable in gold or silver;
5. Fractional Reserve Banking;
6. Elastic currency;
7. Monetary inflation.WILLIAM GREIDER: And I want people to grab their pitch forks, yes, and be unruly. Get in the streets. Be as noisy and as nonviolently provocative as you can be. And stop the politicians from going down that road. And let me add a lot of politicians need that to be able to stand up. Our President needs that to be able to stand up.
JAMES JAEGER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You sound really convincing Mr. Powder-puff.
BILL MOYERS: In this essay last week in "The Washington Post," you describe President Obama as quote "trapped between the governing elites who decide things and the people who are governed." When does he finally have to choose sides?
JAMES JAEGER: Obama is probably a good man who is sincere in making positive changes for We the People. Unfortunately he had to come to power in an old rusty, beat-up vehicle known as the Democratic party. This party is one of the tools used by the power elites that OWN both political parties. The power elite is the DAVOS crowd that has membership in the Council on Foreign Relations. The DAVOS-infested CFR wants globalization. It wants NAFTA. It wants multinational corporations to be able to print and USE all the fiat money they can to expand their global operations. It wants governments to comply. It wants to exploit the United States and reduce it to just another manageable country in the WTO. It WANTS the U.S. Constitution gone. It WANTS the U.S. Citizens stripped of guns. It wants boom and bust cycles so it can steal real estate and assets from the middle class and poor. It wants the mass media to constantly stir up the public and keep them confused. It wants Moyers- and Greider-types to keep pumping out dis-information and all kinds of nonsensical, inconsistent propaganda so the public has NO IDEA what's happening. In short, you have just seen a well-executed counter-propaganda campaign of mass media disinformation presented by two masters: William Greider, the master powder-puff agent of disinformation and Bill Moyers, the left-wing big government socialist apologist that uses media to ensure the public will NEVER know what's really happening.
WILLIAM GREIDER: I think he has to choose as this story keeps unfolding, because I don't think it's going to change dramatically with these new plans announced. In fact, the anger will be stoked.
BILL MOYERS: No, we do forget Bill, that he keeps trying to remind us. We do forget that he walked into a house that was burning.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Yeah, that's true.
BILL MOYERS: And his job is to put it out and rebuild it.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Here's my take on the New Deal and the history of what actually happened. And it conveniently fits my deeper prejudices about the country and how progress is achieved in America. That is, people in the streets or churches or wherever found their voice and made it happen by agitating and informing the higher authorities. In the early '30s, Franklin Roosevelt had a set of things he thought he could do to right the ship of the Depression. He tried some of them. They didn't work very well. Meanwhile, organized labor, others, were all over the country lighting bonfires for bigger changes. Social security came out of that. Labor rights, the first attempt to give people the right to organize their own voices in a company came out of that. A whole bunch of other reforms that we now take for granted. And Roosevelt didn't stand athwart and try to stop them. But he let them roll him. And he- and I think that's what, I hope for now. That people of every stripe will stand up and say, we love you Mr. President, but you don't have it right yet. And we're going to bang on your door until you get it right.
JAMES JAEGER: All this said nothing about anything.
BILL MOYERS: The book is "Come Home America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country." Bill Greider, thanks for being with us.
JAMES JAEGER: Yes, we will all be sure to read this book when we need another powder-puffing.
WILLIAM GREIDER: Thanks very much, Bill.
JAMES JAEGER: Yeah thanks Bill and Bill.
---------------------------
This interview is available at: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html -
07 March 2009
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