In light of recent events, I am republishing.]
By Catherine Austin Fitts
In the fall of 2001 I attended a private investment conference in London to give a paper, The Myth of the Rule of Law or How the Money Works: The Destruction of Hamilton Securities Group.
The presentation documented my experience with a Washington-Wall Street partnership that had:
- Engineered a fraudulent housing and debt bubble;
- Illegally shifted vast amounts of capital out of the U.S.;
- Used “privitization” as a form of piracy – a pretext to move government assets to private investors at below-market prices and then shift private liabilities back to government at no cost to the private liability holder.
Other presenters at the conference included distinguished reporters covering privatization in Eastern Europe and Russia. As the portraits of British ancestors stared down upon us, we listened to story after story of global privatization throughout the 1990s in the Americas, Europe, and Asia.
Slowly, as the pieces fit together, we shared a horrifying epiphany: the banks, corporations and investors acting in each global region were the exact same players. They were a relatively small group that reappeared again and again in Russia, Eastern Europe, and Asia accompanied by the same well-known accounting firms and law firms.
Clearly, there was a global financial coup d’etat underway.
The magnitude of what was happening was overwhelming. In the 1990’s, millions of people in Russia had woken up to find their bank accounts and pension funds simply gone – eradicated by a falling currency or stolen by mobsters who laundered money back into big New York Fed member banks for reinvestment to fuel the debt bubble.
Reports of politicians, government officials, academics, and intelligence agencies facilitating the racketeering and theft were compelling. One lawyer in Russia, living without electricity and growing food to prevent starvation, was quoted as saying, “We are being de-modernized.”
Several years earlier, I listened to three peasant women describe the War on Drugs in their respective countries: Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. I asked them, “After they sweep you into camps, who gets your land and at what price?” My question opened a magic door. They poured out how the real economics worked on the War on Drugs, including the stealing of land and government contracts to build housing for the people who are displaced.
At one point, suspicious of my understanding of how this game worked, one of the women said, “You say you have never been to our countries, yet you understand exactly how the money works. How is this so?” I replied that I had served as Assistant Secretary of Housing at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the United States where I oversaw billions of government investment in US communities. Apparently, it worked the same way in their countries as it worked in mine.
I later found out that the government contractor leading the War on Drugs strategy for U.S. aid to Peru, Colombia and Bolivia was the same contractor in charge of knowledge management for HUD enforcement. This Washington-Wall Street game was a global game. The peasant women of Latin America were up against the same financial pirates and business model as the people in South Central Los Angeles, West Philadelphia, Baltimore and the South Bronx.
Later, courageous reporting by several independent investigative reporters confirmed in detail that the privatization and economic warfare model I discussed in London had deep roots in Latin America.
We were experiencing a global “heist”: capital was being sucked out of country after country. The presentation I gave in London revealed a piece of the puzzle that was difficult for the audience to fathom. This was not simply happening in the emerging markets. It was happening in America, too.
I described a meeting that had occurred in April 1997, more than four years before that day in London. I had given a presentation to a distinguished group of U.S. pension fund leaders on the extraordinary opportunity to re-engineer the U.S. federal budget. I presented our estimate that the prior year’s federal investment in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area had a negative return on investment.
We presented that it was possible to finance places with private equity and re-engineer the government investment to a positive return and, as a result, generate significant capital gains. Hence, it was possible to use U.S. pension funds to significantly increase retirees’ retirement security by successfully investing in American communities, small business and farms — all in a manner that would reduce debt, improve skills, and create jobs.
The response from the pension fund investors to this analysis was quite positive until the President of the CalPERS pension fund — the largest in the country — said, “You don’t understand. It’s too late. They have given up on the country. They are moving all the money out in the fall [of 1997]. They are moving it to Asia.”
Sure enough, that fall, significant amounts of moneys started leaving the US, including illegally. Over $4 trillion went missing from the US government. No one seemed to notice. Misled into thinking we were in a boom economy by a fraudulent debt bubble engineered with force and intention from the highest levels of the financial system, Americans were engaging in an orgy of consumption that was liquidating the real financial equity we needed urgently to reposition ourselves for the times ahead.
The mood that afternoon in London was quite sober. The question hung in the air, unspoken: once the bubble was over, was the time coming when we, too, would be “de-modernized?”
In 2009 — more than seven years later — this is a question that many of us are asking ourselves.
Part II: Rethinking Diversification
Related Reading:
Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits
Catherine and readers: I somewhat agree with the recent YouTube postings “Catherine Fitts IRTA Barter Convention”. However, when I look at the audience of the YouTube postings most people are not reflective the the “real world”; meaning the struggling masses without access to the financial issues you discuss. Let me provide and example: the “decentralization” you discuss already exists in the “street-cash-market” of the favelas, barrios and ghettos of the world. The “barter” you advocate already exists in the street market of the favelas, barrios and ghettos of the world. The “stockpiling” of perishables already exist. The culture of fraud is something that all poor people are aware of and why we most humbly depend on eachother and not the life of those around you. The culture of fraud is the “good ol boy network” which is now the “good ol girl network” where the commoner is not recognized because of our look, upbringing, unpretentiousness, and humility towards life. Look at the oommon Oaxacan, Chinese, Thai, Indigenous Mexican, Ukranian, caste Indian, the African, and the poor whites and you will see the culture of fraud staring at you in the face. No wonder the masses don’t believe in the school system, nor the banking system, nor the government system. There should be no surprise because history has shown us the response of the commoners and that is the French Revoloution, the American Revolution, and worse the Dark Ages. The hope is we the common people are humble by virtue of our struggle and our belief. Therefore the sustanance is primal in our approach and belief in God, the Holy Spirit, the Yaweh, the Tao, the Way, and may I say the Son of Man. The decentralization is and always will be the trust we put in each person in our immediate surroundings. So let us
surprised at downfall of the markets; it has alwaays existed in the “real world”.
Dear Catherine: I’m remiss to presume you are not from a poorer neighborhood and apologies in order. However, I read the the document posted on your weblinke http://www.dunwalke.com. I also read Naomi Klien (The Shock Doctrine), and reviwed Greg Palast. While I certainly get what they are saying my response as a man in the streets is “tell me more”. You see, as stated before, our world, the real world for people at the edge is all in cash, and the brown market, which in essense is insulated from the elitists you all talk about. I laugh in the faces of the discussions above because plesase go to each “barrio”, “favela”, “slum”, “ghetto”, “market street” of the world and you will find a world dealing in cash, barter, exchange, small loans, people supporting people, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, common masses huddling together to survive. We don’t look like the people you write about with as you stated “there tall looks and piercing blue eyes”. Does that look intrique you? Why do you even presume to think we care? Give me the cracked wrinkled skin of the poor white man, the rough calloused hand of the brown farmworker, the entrepeneurial skill of the cook in the backroom, the market place in the Chinatowns of the world, the people living at the edge who don’t live in your world your write about, nor do we really care. We already know the real world. And we don’t need an MBA to understand. Welcome all to the real world.
The truth:
And you are…?
Catherine
NEWS;Banking giant UBS admits to helping defraud IRS, will pay $780M, open secret Swiss records
Catherine, I understand the need for fines and penalties. But some of these look more like a payoff to continue doing business in our country, at the expense of shareholders, account holders..and of course the gnomes of zurich. So much for my numbered account.
Wel catherine i am who you think i am, therefore i am. Decifer that in your books. Now answer this, if what you are saying and your books are saying are true as you state, then why doesnt the government try to shut you up(no disrespect), like they do with every other person who claims these groups exist.
I think too many people will fall prey to those awful dystopia movies. Can world wide socialism be far behind? This is like a bad dream, a real bad dream!
Socialism on the surface could be a good thing; however, greed and socialism sometimes can mix just like oil and water. Just add a little soap with both and the tension can breakdown. But the slickness of the oil is still there slithering around just like a snake.
Now is the time not to run around yelling that the sky is falling.
Dear “the truth:’
Looks like you have not read my website and are not familiar with my work.
Here is an online book that describes my experience working in Washington and on Wall Street:
http://www.dunwalke.com
Here are thousands of pages of documents documenting my experience litigating with the federal government:
http://www.dunwalke.com/gideon
At the archives at http://www.solari.com you will find numerous stories and stories where I describe lots of experience and my history.
If you look up the Kemp Tapes on the blog, you can access hours of dictated history of working in the Bush Administration. Years ago, these had quite a camp following on the internet as a “tell all” that helped people understand what it is like to work in a high level position in a federal government agency.
My detailed resume is posted at “about us” at http://www.solari.com
There is no story about my seeing a UFO because I have never seen one. I have driven across the Great Plains on many occasions and see lots of lights in the sky that seemed closer than stars. Not sure that qualifies.
And you are….?
Catherine