The Conspiracy Foreshadowed (circa 1800) If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. [...]

[via Philip Greenspun]

[I]f too many depositors leave, the illusion that the big banks are serving the American public will be burst, and a critical mass of consciousness will occur, so that the banks’ unquestioned control over the American political and financial systems will start to be questioned. – Big Banks Plead with Customers Not to Move Their [...]

There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose. . . . By [...]

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. This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged “you’re on your own” individualism for everyone else. – Bernie [...]

Some heady cognitive dissonance here – this traitor “trader” and his advice are good news only for that increasingly-mythical American middle class: [via Lance Robotson] Excerpts: I’m a trader, I don’t really care… We don’t really care that much, how to fix the economy, how to fix the situation – our job is to make [...]

Tens of trillions of dollars are being extracted from the United States of America. Democrats aren’t doing it, republicans aren’t doing it, an entire integrated system, banking, trade and taxation, created by both parties over a period of two decades is at work on our entire country right now. – Dylan Ratigan [via TYWKIWDBI]

Economic history 101 tells us that in the modern context, a financial sector focused on extracting wealth—instead of on creating it—is one of the few sure ways to ensure the swift, steady decline of a nation (the others being war, debt, and sheer indolence). I’d say that without the institutional reinvention of finance, America simply [...]

Like a terrorist in a horror film, Wall Street thrives on threats. Three short years ago, Wall Street was virtually bankrupt, a ward of the state. We could have jailed “just one” of them back then, when they were down for the count. Instead, we bailed them out! Made them richer. Gave them $13.7 trillion, [...]

I enjoy Don Peck’s attempt at capturing the zeitgeist of the American empire’s decline – the article over at The Atlantic Online includes more than a few choice observations and anecdotal truisms for a generation losing its grasp on the American Dream and its alternately apathetic and unprepared antecedents: Some neighbors were at the Walmart [...]