The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008:
An Analysis by Catherine Austin Fitts
~ Click here for the full article.
If there is to be any blessing in this housing bill, perhaps it will be to so offend, so disgust those of us who are awake that the process of withdrawing from the old and reinvesting in the new models will accelerate. And maybe the smartest and most creative among us will be willing to invest the time and energy it takes to reinvent a model that incorporates what we like to think are traditional American values. These are the values that are enduring and make us proud to be Americans still. There is no hint of these values in the housing bill. There is, however, an abundance of them in the hearts and minds of the people.
- Housing Bill, Part I – Overview
- Housing Bill Part II – Nation State or Investment Syndicate?
- Housing Bill, Part III – Your House Is Bigger than My House
- Housing Bill, Part IV – The Profits of Playing Ball
- Housing Bill, Part V – Where Is the Collateral?
- Housing Bill, Part VI – The Tapeworm Corporation Comes Out of the Closet
- Housing Bill, Part VII – Andrew Cuomo Owes Us $5 Trillion
- Housing Bill, Part VIII – The Two Great Financial Mysteries of Our Time: Missing Money and Collateral Fraud
- Housing Bill, Part IX – In the Destruction of the Old, Let There Be the Creation of the New
Catherine Austin Fitts served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration. Her company Hamilton Securities Group served as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration during the Clinton Administration. She is a former managing director and member of the board of the Wall Street investment bank Dillon, Read & Co. Inc.
Please, someone, take the opportunity to edify a poor stiff trying to make sense of the Freddie and Fannie situation. This Fitts article on the housing bill and the evil tapeworm cabal behind it would lead someone to believe that the investors in Freddie and Fannie would do fabulously well. You wrote,
“The housing bill has put forward the most explicit description yet of the true corporate model prevailing in America—congressionally legislated businesses with central-bank-determined stock prices.”
Yet the stock is near dead and even Warren Buffett is not interested. Bailouts that I can sense are poised to wipe out any common share holders. This inconsistency seems huge to me. Please show me how I do not understand. If the tapeworm economy is so stransparent and “out of the closet” and fully engorged, why are Fannie and Freddie dying? Please respond. The credibility of your brilliantly written lengthy article on the housing bill demands it. Thanks in advance.
As an American living in Switzerland, I can only say that this is the clearest indication yet that America is not a democracy in the true sense of the word. If the people of America had the ultimate authority within their government and Ms. Austin Fitts could bring forward a referendum that would oppose this bill, Congress and indeed the American president would be in a completely different position. Tapeworm corporations would have a much more difficult time feeding off the American taxpayer.
I have seen people in Switzerland utterly surprised to learn that Americans don’t have the basic democratic right of referendum at the federal level. True democracy can be a pain in the neck sometimes. Decisions to invade other countries for instance may have to wait until the referendum process has a chance to play itself out. Each individual voter has an opportunity to weigh for themselves whether they wish to pay for a military conflict with their money and perhaps the lives of their children, or their own. And there’s also the problem of education. Only an educated populace with a free press based on informative reporting can create a true democracy.
I often wonder what effect injecting the right of referendum would have on the American government and people. It would be a challenge to implement, but from my personal experience here, where the influence of direct democracy is evident everywhere in society, I can only imagine it would be very healthy indeed.
Just started reading Ms.Fitts and will be back for more.
However for more than a decade my one political position has been Burn Washington To The Ground And Start Over.
Unfortunately it is true that most of the public, althought they sense something fundamentally wrong, are unwilling to admit the reality or too uninformed to understand that we have a government approved system of criminal capitalism, not free enterprize.
You will not be able to reform it or vote it out. Barring accidently electing miracle leaders who will rennounce every deal they made to get into and stay in office, nationalize the airwaves and educate the public you will have to wait for the final collapse. Or throw your own revolution.
Then you can start over. Until then all the plans, reforms, suggestions, good ideas are just fingers in the dike.
Catherine, great work! It was clear to all of us who have read Griffin’s writings and seen Money Master’s, read Tragedy and Hope and “Hope of the Wicked” that this whole housing bubble was engineered to expand to the point when it could easily be collapsed. We see now that one consequence is that the US gov’t (and its puupeteers) will soon become the bigesst landlord(s) in the western world. We know the banker’s have engineered this as an asset-grab, and that the stock markets are being collapsed (and going much lower before it’s all over) just like in other episodes where it has been done to confiscate wealth; but what other implications are there for the financial markets and for US society? What do you think are the goals of the bankers for this episode? BTW did you see the Lindsay Williams interview with Jonathan May (on youtube.com in 7 parts now)? Facsinating. If the 1987 market crash was engineered to confiscate Saudi billions then what do you think is the goal here?
Keep up the good work.
I am a new-comer to your blogs and website–wow! Potent, provocative, a little hair-raising. I’m not sure I’m totally on board yet, but am very interested in many of your arguments, especially your main thesis of tapeworm economics. But a question: if the tapeworm is in high gear and out in the open, you’d expect Fannie and Freddie to not only survive, but thrive, since they are allegedly extensions of the tapeworm model. Why are they teetering near insolvency and bankrupcy? Wouldn’t bailouts just wipe out investors, the very people and organizations that the tapeworm supposedly supports? Please explain.
Elaine:
From 1997 on, I have worked entirely with independent journalist and on line media that are serious about the truth and have integrity.
Yes, KPFA has censored. However, a lot of good stuff still gets out on KPFA. I appear to reach more and more people every day, so now the time has come to build my own channel.
The censorship is our opportunity. More and more people are realizing the censorship and are looking for alternatives.
Thanks for your opportunity for an interview. I would welcome it once we have our first subscription bridge call launched,
Catherine
Dear Catherine,
I noticed with some alarm that you are now being censored even in the ‘liberal’ media like public radio. I want to welcome you to the growing community of people who are totally locked out of the entire US media complex. I, too, am censored the exact same way. Sometimes, even as I walked into a TV studio to appear on national TV, I would be told, ‘Go away and don’t come back.’
Then, they never answer calls or letters and that is it! Bush Jr sent Haley Barbour to the NYT, for example, to demand they never publish me again. And they didn’t ever publish me again. I learned about this from another publisher who broke the story. But the story didn’t ‘take off’ because all the other media refused to talk about it.
Starting in 1989, when this really began, I was annoyed and bemused. I found all sorts of ways around this. For example, when the internet took off, I would run my own ‘forums’ inside of the NYT, CNN, ABC and other forums they had from 1996-2000. But one by one, these were shut down. In all the cases, first, I was removed and ‘banned.’ Then the entire operation was shut down because I would write stuff elsewhere on the web and people at these forums would link to them.
So it is with you! You are now talking about the innermost workings of the system. The closer you get to talking about the connection of war, money making, the CIA [I grew up inside the CIA, by the way] etc. leads to censorship. The media doesn’t mind goofy conspiracy theorists. They are frightened of real people who served in the government or in my case, worked with CIA parents, who know the inside of the inside.
This is why your censorship will now grow until you become ‘That woman’. It amuses me to see stories about the past whereby I am referred to as ‘she’ or ‘her’. Once, George Magazine, after the Kennedy kid died, decided to do a hit piece on me. Each time they wrote my name, they wrote it wrong. My own readers made fun of this at the magazine’s online site. Then suddenly, the magazine and all this hoo-ha vanished forever!
Another example: on 11/12/2000, I went throughout the Senate to get Senators to endorse my ‘Uniform Voting Machine Act’ bill. I learned from one Senator, he was going to flip from Republican to Democratic. I went to Trent Lott to tell him he was doomed. He refused to sigh onto this proposal I had but the DNC leaders said they loved it and would endorse it.
As I left DC, I heard on the radio nothing but praise for this bill. Then, one of the Senators mentioned my name on air. The NPR story vanished! Never heard again! Not one Senator would admit to meeting me that day! The bill died, of course. It was not curious to me that this happened. I expected it. I was amused about breaking the wall of silence but now, it is ten times thicker and higher.
By the way, I would LOVE to do an interview with you! If you have time in your extremely busy schedule, I would love to talk.