Secret Loans

According to the GAO audit, $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010.  The following list of firms and the amount of money that they received was taken directly from page 131 of the GAO audit report....

Citigroup - $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley - $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch - $1.949 trillion
Bank of America - $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC - $868 billion
Bear Sterns - $853 billion
Goldman Sachs - $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase - $391 billion
Deutsche Bank - $354 billion
UBS - $287 billion
Credit Suisse - $262 billion
Lehman Brothers - $183 billion
Bank of Scotland - $181 billion
BNP Paribas - $175 billion
Wells Fargo - $159 billion
Dexia - $159 billion
Wachovia - $142 billion
Dresdner Bank - $135 billion
Societe Generale - $124 billion
"All Other Borrowers" - $2.639 trillion

This report was made available to all the members of Congress, but most of them have been totally silent about it.  One of the only members of Congress that has said something has been U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
The following is an excerpt from a statement about this audit that was taken from the official website of Senator Sanders....

"As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world"

Venezuela Takes Shipment of European Gold Holdings

Merentes didn't specify the quantity of gold shipped on Friday but told a rally of
supporters outside the central bank headquarters that it was valued at around $300
million. In August, President Hugo Chavez announced plans to repatriate foreign
reserves as part of a broader effort to nationalize the country's gold sector.
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan officials Friday welcomed the first air shipment of
overseas gold holdings as part of a controversial move to repatriate the country's
foreign reserves held in North America and Europe.

We’ve Had Enough Government ‘Stimulation’

After three years and $4 trillion in combined deficit spending, unemployment remains stubbornly high and the economy sluggish. That people are still asking what the government can do to stimulate the economy is mind-boggling.

That the Keynesian-inspired deficit spending binge did create jobs isn’t in question. The real question is whether it created any net jobs after all the negative effects of the spending and debt are taken into account. How many private-sector jobs were lost or not created in the first place because of the resources diverted to the government for its job creation? How many jobs are being lost or not created because of increased uncertainty in the business community over future tax increases and other detrimental government policies?
Don’t expect the disciples of interventionist government to attempt an answer to those questions any time soon. It has simply become gospel in some quarters that massive deficit spending is necessary to get the economy back on its feet.
The idea that government spending can “make up for” a slow-down in private economic activity has already been discredited by the historical record—including the Great Depression and Japan’s recent “lost decade.”
Our own history offers evidence that reducing the government’s footprint on the private sector is the better way to get the economy going.
Take for example, the “Not-So-Great Depression” of 1920-21. Cato Institute scholar Jim Powell notes that President Warren G. Harding inherited from his predecessor Woodrow Wilson “a post-World War I depression that was almost as severe, from peak to trough, as the Great Contraction from 1929 to 1933 that FDR would later inherit.” Instead of resorting to deficit spending to “stimulate” the economy, taxes and government spending were cut. The economy took off.
Similarly, fears at the end of World War II that demobilization would result in double-digit unemployment when the troops returned home were unrealized. Instead, spending was dramatically reduced, economic controls were lifted, and the returning troops were successfully reintegrated into the economy.
Therefore, the focus of policymakers in Washington should be on fostering long-term economic growth instead of futilely trying to jump-start the economy with costly short-term government spending sprees. In order to reignite economic growth and job creation, the federal government should enact dramatic cuts in government spending, eliminate burdensome regulations, and scuttle restrictions on foreign trade.
The budgetary reality is that policymakers today have no choice but to drastically reduce spending if we are to head off the looming fiscal train wreck. Stimulus proponents generally recognize that our fiscal path is unsustainable, but they argue that the current debt binge is nonetheless critical to an economic recovery.
There’s no more evidence for this belief than there is for the existence of the tooth fairy.
Not only has Washington’s profligacy left us worse off, our children now face the prospect of reduced living standards and crushing debt.



This article originally appeared in a PolicyMic debate between the Cato Institute’s Tad DeHaven and Demos senior fellow Lew Daly.

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Russia Adds 19.5 Tonnes Of Gold Reserves In October Alone

Read story: http://golongorshort.com/2011/11/25/currency-wars-russia-officially-adds-19-5-tonnes-of-gold-reserves-in-october-alone/