Time To Wake Up!

Welcome to the first issue of Time to Wake Up! What you are about to read is a response to the increasing erosion of our freesociety. It is the result of a compulsion to do something, to effect change to help counter the downward spiral in which we are

headed. It is hoped that the writing therein will encourage the reader to do his or her own research to ask questions to seek truthand justice. The goal is to do this in a variety of ways through art, poetry, and straight up writing from a variety of people. We live in

a deluge of lies brought by the powers that be and the media. Enough is enough! Time to Wake Up! Comments welcome!

There is an epidemic of texting soto speak. People drive and text– true true. And talk on the

phone. But the way the media has it,people are just crashing everywhere,at every turn. “Man, I can’t gonowhere without running into a text ndrive crash!” The NTSB is moving toban phones altogether, even “handsfree”. Yoo-hoo, not to poo-poo aserious subject, but aren’t there moreserious epidemics to worry about?WTF?!There is a proliferation of the modern-day pillory so-to-speak. You may see itin the form of a dollar newspapercontaining nothing but the mug shotsof people arrested for petty thingsmostly. The trend now seems to befinding its way to digital billboards.They are indeed entertaining and tosome extent a deterrent for would beor current offenders.Let us look at this pillory within awider context. Consider yoursurroundings. What is going onaround you? What do you see andhear about? You hear aboutunemployment, bankruptcies, andthings being “tight” everywhere,foreclosures, and fixing budgets. Why

do these things happen? Is there apattern of interconnected people,places and events? Or is it more likethe lottery balls tumbling in a cage?Who wins? Who loses? Are yousatisfied with the information that isoffered you by mainstream news?This writer, sometime ago began towonder how this complex worldworked. For example, why did theearth move when Alan Greenspanspoke? How does money work andhow do all those financiers knowwhat’s going on in a quandary offinancial information and complexmaneuvers? Why did my once vibrantindustrial town go to pot? Why isthere no substance in anythinganymore? This curiosity led to asearch, a quest, a willingness to findout and understand. The journey,though short compared to others whodared to seek answers, has led tostartling discoveries and theconclusion that world as presented tous through education and media, isnot what most think it is. Hopefully,this short writing will open a set ofeyes or two.So let us begin with the money. It isalmost as essential as food and has

many technicalities and caveats. Aspertains to how it affects us, it can bebroken down in one simple fact: oneprivate entity has been entrusted tocreate money and loan it to ourgovernment for about 100 years. Mostdo not know that the Federal Reserveis a private institution brought to lifeby the same financial companies thatdominate the financial world today.Some names may have changed, orinstitutions merged, but nonethelessthe same interests are still in chargeand not about to lose control.The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 wasthe genius of a handful of financierswho met in secret on Jekyll Island in1910. Representatives from JP Morganand National City Bank were present.Citibank at that time was known asNational City Bank and remains part ofthe Rockefeller constellation today.Some might remember that both JPMorgan and Citibank were among thebanks that received bailout moneyfrom the government in 2008. Therewere others too like Senator Aldrich ofRhode Island who was an advocate ofpowerful business interests. Therewas also an assistant Secretary of theTreasury Abraham Piatt Andrew and

A Real Epidemic - by Jayant M. Thomas

Paul M. Warburg, of Kuhn, Loeb &Company.i In his well-researchedbook, The Creature from Jekyll Island,G. Edward Griffin lays out theobjectives of the meeting:“1. Stop the growing influence ofsmall, rival banks and to insure thatcontrol over the nation’s financialresources would remain in the handsof those present;2. Make the money supply moreelastic in order to reverse the trend ofprivate capital formation and torecapture the industrial loan market;3. Pool the meager reserves of all thenation’s banks into one large reserveso that at least a few of them couldprotect themselves from currencydrains and bank runs;4. Shift the inevitable losses from theowners of the banks to the taxpayers;5. Convince Congress that the schemewas a measure to protect the public.”ii

Of course, the public would not likelyendorse such a measure, so deceptionwas needed. What means did theyuse? Griffin outlines again:“To convince Congress and the publicthat the establishment of a bankingcartel was, somehow, a measure toprotect the public, the Jekyll Islandstrategists laid down the followingplan of action:1. Do not call it a cartel nor even acentral bank.2. Make it look like a governmentagency3. Establish regional branches tocreate the appearance ofdecentralization, not dominated byWall Street.4. Begin with a conservative structureincluding many sound bankingprinciples knowing that the provisionscan be quietly altered or removed insubsequent years.5. Use the anger caused by recentpanics and bank failures to createpopular demand for monetary reform.6. Offer the Jekyll Island plan asthough it were in response to thatneed.

7. Employ university professors to givethe plan the appearance of academicapproval.8. Speak out against the plan toconvince the public that Wall Streetbankers do now want it.”iii

How It Works – The MandrakeMechanism

Have you ever seen footage of theprinting presses rolling, printing lots ofmoney? Did you ever think, “If I couldget my hands on one of those sheetsof money, I’d have it made!”? Thiswriter has, especially as a child. Ioften wondered what those workersthought as they pulled sheets ofmoney off of the press. Griffinpresents the manufacture of money asThe Mandrake Mechanism. There areseveral parts; however we will focushere on the first and most basic partof it. Key point: “The entire function ofthe machine (The Federal Reserve) isto convert debt into money. It’s justthat simple.” So how does debt getconverted into money? First Congressgives the Fed an IOU, also known as abond. As IOU implies, it is a promise topay. In exchange for the IOU, the Feddoes magic- it creates money fromnothing. Presto!!! Yes that is right,money from nothing. It is like the oldRocky and Bullwinkle Show except therabbit comes out of the hat everytime, for sure, in the form of money!Mo money mo money! Congress takesits money and spends it. Meanwhilethere is yet more money to be made,or rather created from nothing. TheFed does this by taking the IOU,putting it aside and reclassifying it as a“reserve”. From this so-called reserve,the Fed creates 9 additional dollarswhich is then lent out to banks andindividuals. But wait! There is a rentalfee commonly known as interest, andit is paid back through taxes. Forevery dollar created, there is a debt.Another more subtle fee is inflation.iv

Each dollar printed takes value away

from the dollars already in circulation.It is similar to something of value. Saythere is an abundance of metal X, andthen its price goes down. If there isless, than its price goes up. Anotherway to look at it is this way. If youever happen upon a Cracker Barrelrestaurant, there is usually displayfeaturing cards with different years onthem. Look up the years, say, yourgrandparents were born. Notice thecost of basic items like eggs, a hot dog,and cheese burger. Next, look at thefollowing decades. You will inevitablynotice prices consistently going up.Such is inflation.So basically the Federal Reservecontrols the economy and it is in thebusiness of making money- out ofnothing. It lends to member banks ofthe Federal Reserve System (thecartel), money created out of nothing.These banks are the same ones thathouse your savings and otheraccounts, those that give you loans foryour automobiles and other things.Rental fees in the form of interest arewhat the banks charge for the use oftheir money.Da Capo! (Back to the Head)Hmm…Is anyone envisioning thePeanuts cartoon where Charlie Browngoes to kick the football and Lucy pullsit away? Then Lucy laughs and laughs?If not, you should. Remember what G.Edward Griffin noted: “Shift theinevitable losses from the owners ofthe banks to the taxpayers”. Thisshould hit you right where “the sundon’t shine!” Remember the so-calledcrash of 2008 and the ensuingrecession? Then secretary of theTreasury Henry Paulson threatenedthe congress into approving billions inbailout money to the banks or else theeconomy would crash. Those of youwho even remotely follow the newsare aware of the massive bailouts thatwere doled out to major banks andcorporations. One of the causes thatled to the 2008 catastrophe was therepeal of the Glass-Stegal Act underthe Clinton Administration. This Act

was created during the RooseveltAdministration to staunch thespeculative casino onslaughtresponsible for the Great Depression.Another contributing factor to thecrash was the encouragement of laxlending standards leading to thehousing boom and subsequent bust. Itis important to note also that for aperiod of time, Federal ReserveChairman Ben Bernanke refused todisclose where and to whom a lot ofthe bailout money went. It later cameout that much went to foreign banks.In response to questioning fromcongress, he simply said, “I don’tknow!” Uh, yeah bro. So briefly let ushighlight an example of this casino-likeatmosphere.Some of you might remember hearingthe terms ‘Derivatives’ and ‘CreditDefault Swaps’ in the news at the timeof the housing collapse. Financialwriter and researcher Ellen Brownbreaks it down:

“Credit default swaps are themost widely traded form ofcredit derivative. They arebets between two partieswhether or not a company willdefault on its bonds. In atypical default swap, the‘protection buyer’ gets a largepayoff if the company defaultswithin a certain period of time,while the ‘protection seller’collects periodic payments forassuming the risk of default.” v

Sellers such as AIG, Bear Stearns,hedge funds and other financialentities made a lot of money off of thesale of these debt schemes.Essentially they made money doingabsolutely nothing until it becametime to pay up. Keep in mind that themoney made from these were taxfree! Lax regulation also allowed thehousing crisis which is intertwinedwith the derivatives. As some of youmight recall, many loans were re-packaged and sold as securities to

investors all over the world. The lurefor investors was a steady stream ofincomes from people paying theirmortgages. However, when a lot ofthe sub-prime loan interest rates wentup or readjusted, as specified in theloan agreements, many homeownerscould no longer afford to pay. Thisaffected a large swath of investors andinstitutions, from banks togovernments, to pension fundsworldwide. Suddenly theirinvestments became worthless. Butyet some at the very top of thepyramid profited before everything hitthe fan. They escaped unscathed.Why aren’t they in the dollar paper?

So now, we have sky highunemployment, businesses thatare not hiring, businesses and

worthy individuals that can’t getcredit, 43 million people on foodstamps and some rhetorical bullshitabout a jobless recovery. To thiswriter, this is far more epidemic andlethal than worrying about who istexting and driving. This whole fiascohas enabled a huge transfer of wealthto the “one percent” and it is norandom occurrence. It is alsonecessitating the privatization ofpublic assets from sanitation andsidewalks to water into private handsworldwide as municipalities struggleto make ends meet. One of thefounding fathers of the FederalReserve once stated, “Competitions isa sin!” And so this crisis, engineeredby the financial powers and one in along succession of financialmanipulation has served to transferyet more wealth and assets to awealthy minority. Guess who is on thehook? The taxpayer. How much sensedoes it make to throw money atinstitutions that made bad bets?Absolutely none. Time to wake up!i Edward, Griffin G., The Creature from Je-kyll Island: A Second Look at the FederalReserve Westlake Village, CA: AmericanMedia, 2002), 24.

ii Ibid. 437iii Ibid. 437-438iv Ibid. 193

v Brown, Ellen, “Credit Default Swaps:Evolving Financial Meltdown and Deriva-tive Disaster Du Jour,”http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8634

Contact information:

Mistajayant@hotmail.com