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Posts tagged ‘banking’

Financial Crashes from Casino Corporate Banking Practices


eurozone12-amigos

Financial Crashes from Casino Corporate Banking Practices

 

Many experts found a formula to save the Banks and cut the « evil » forces which created the current international banking mess. They advocate to separate Retail/ Personal/ or Consumer banking from bank investment arms which is called Corporate/ business/ or investment Banking.
This solution is called “ring-fence rules”. Since 2009, Britain continue to discuss to make banks run retail banking operations as independent banks, almost entirely separate from their investment banking (higher-risk investment activities (“casino banking”)) and overseas operations, as the Bank of England made it clear that there will be no relaxation of the incoming ring-fencing rules.

Former Barclays chairman says: Bank ring-fence is redundant and should be scrapped.
We have better things to do than implement the ring-fence, says HSBC
The ring-fence rules apply to HSBC, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds Banking Group, Santander UK and the Co-operative Bank.
S&P warns ring-fence could turn UK investment banks into junk.

All banks are resisting efforts to split investment and retail banking on the grounds that it would cost billions to establish and reduce their profits.
Banks are avoiding and ignoring any reforms or public discussions on “ring-fence rules” aiming for the separation of investment and retail banking.
The media and the public are kept in the dark; and politicians who support such reforms are being undermined.

Post banks are very popular, secure, reliable, accessible and affordable type of retail/personal/ consumer banking. They are considered major financial services providers in many countries around the world. Japan, Germany, China, South Africa, and India have huge post banks.
Debate over re-instituting postal banking in the USA is heating up. Postal banks started in Great Britain in 1861 and, from the outset; the primary goal was financial inclusion. But in the U.S., postal banking had other uses as well. By 1934, postal banks had $1.2 billion in assets—about 10 percent of the entire commercial banking system—as small savers fled failing banks to the safety of a government-backed institution. Deposits also reached their peak in 1947 with almost $3.4 billion and 4 million users banking at their post offices. In 1965 postal banking in USA was ended.
Retail/personal/ consumer post banking can be established as independent public banks or operate as agents for private retail/personal/ consumer banks. They can greatly assist in separating Retail Banking from Corporate Banking, and provide accessible and affordable services for wide population.

This will, also, give the public postal system revenues to advance and expand their products and services. These services were abolished and ruined with IMF and World Bank policies in most developing countries. Now if anyone wants to send a parcel or transfer money they have to pay huge costs for foreign businesses that amount to theft.

Mobile banking could be great boost for national and international postal banking by introducing universal a single cash terminal/cashier in each suburb. All cash deposits and withdrawals could be made there, and these terminals/cashiers shall deliver and receive cash daily to and from different banks and businesses without the need for visiting banks and businesses branches. In this system, the area’s post office shall perform most of the functions of all cashiers for all banks and businesses at a fee. This shall reduce banking costs, create revenues, provide better and easier services, and expand and develop postal and courier products and quality.

Transforming Post banks into fully fledged retail banks with intensive mobile banking services and integration with postal, courier and saving systems are obvious and natural development goals.
Without separating Retail/ personal/ consumer Banking from Corporate / business Banking individuals always will carry risks and pay unfair costs to compensate for losses incurred from “casino banking” of Corporate / business Banks.
Many big Corporate / business Banks in America, Europe and the world bankrupted despite being supported by unseen revenues from Retail/ personal/ consumer banking.
It became very clear that No bank is too big to fail. So, the public must be very careful and don’t assume big international corporate banks are safer or better than local small Retail/ personal/ consumer banks. Post banks must be developed and encouraged to compete and go ahead forcing the Separation of investment and retail banking for the public and national interests and for financial stability and economy.

Post banks are very important in protecting people and economies from devastating financial crashes caused by casino banking practices.

Greece and Exiting European Hotel California


Greece Withdrawal from European Hotel California

Greece Withdrawal from European Hotel California

Hotel California the lovely top hit song from the Eagles’ album of the same name that they released as a single in February 1977. The last line sounds to be fitting to the European Union.

The lyrics describe an establishment as a luxury resort where “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.” On the surface, it tells the tale of a weary traveler who becomes trapped in a nightmarish luxury hotel that at first appears inviting and tempting. The song is an allegory about hedonism, self-destruction, and greed of the late 1970s. The abstract nature of the lyrics has led listeners to their own interpretations over the years.

Enjoy the lyrics first; then proceed to the grim question of could a Member State Leave the European Union and/or Euro-zone ?

Hotel California

On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair
Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light
My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim
I had to stop for the night
There she stood in the doorway;
I heard the mission bell
And I was thinking to myself,
This could be heaven or this could be hell
Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way
There were voices down the corridor,
I thought I heard them say…

Welcome to the hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
Plenty of room at the hotel California
Any time of year, you can find it here

Her mind is tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends
She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys, that she calls friends
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.
Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the captain,
Please bring me my wine
He said, we haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty-nine
And still those voices are calling from far away,
Wake you up in the middle of the night
Just to hear them say…

Welcome to the hotel California
Such a lovely place
Such a lovely face
They living it up at the hotel California
What a nice surprise, bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,
The pink champagne on ice
And she said we are all just prisoners here, of our own device
And in the master’s chambers,
They gathered for the feast
The stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
Relax, said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave!

Rights of withdrawal from the European Union; Does a right of withdrawal exist?

The treaties were concluded “for an unlimited period”
● Article 53, TEU
● Article 356, TFEU
Accordingly, there is no right to withdraw from the EU unless such a right can be inferred or implied from treaty itself (Article 56, Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. However, Article 50 TEU (inserted by Lisbon) now allows a Member State to withdraw from the EU in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

Provisions dealing with negotiation of withdrawal do not specifically deal with a Member State also departing from Eurozone. So there is a mechanism for withdrawal which comprises both EU and Eurozone membership under Article 50. This is followed by immediate re-application solely for EU membership under Article 49.

Rights of Withdrawal from the Eurozone

The Treaties do not create an express right of withdrawal from Eurozone. No right of withdrawal can be implied since inconsistent with Article 140(3), TFEU (which refers to the irrevocable fixing of the euro substitution rate for the acceding currency)

There is therefore no procedure available under which Member State can leave Eurozone but remain within EU. In strictly legal terms, such an outcome could only be achieved by a revision of the Treaties.

Both Member State in difficulties and all other Member States may agree that Eurozone departure would be in best interests of all. What legal avenues are open to them? Amendment/ratification of Treaties would be very time- consuming and would not answer a pressing urgency.

Suspension of treaty is allowed for a period, but merely gives time and does not affect overall legal position among the parties (Articles 60 and 72, Vienna Convention). There is therefore no treaty or legally-based mechanism allowing for a Eurozone (as opposed to an EU) exit on an urgent basis.

There is no easy way out of the Eurozone – voluntarily or compulsorily. This is to be expected given the inter-connected nature of the currency and of the European financial markets.

A Eurozone departure is not necessarily a remedy for the fiscal ills of the departing Member State and (unless a “position of strength” departure) is likely to increase its debt servicing costs, given that many external creditors will remain entitled to claim payment in Euro. Local creditors in the departing Member State itself and holders of domestic law obligations are the most likely to be disadvantaged by the withdrawal.

Who Really Controls the World?


(The processes of inventing Jews, the Talmud, and Judaism is explained in the following article: The Invention of Judaism in Babylonian Iraq  and in another article Replacing Semitic Judeans and Torah with Turkic Jews and Talmud )

Who Really Controls the World?

Prof. Dr. Mujahid Kamran wrote a great article on December 14, 2011, on the New Dawn magazine Special Issue #18 stating the following:

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organised, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” – Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States (1856-1924)

“So you see, my dear Coningsby, that the world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.” – Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804-1881)

The advent of the industrial revolution, the invention of a banking system based on usury, and scientific and technological advancements during the past three centuries have had three major consequences. These have made the incredible concentration of wealth in a few hands possible, have led to the construction of increasingly deadly weapons culminating in weapons of mass destruction, and have made it possible to mould the minds of vast populations by application of scientific techniques through the media and control of the educational system.

The wealthiest families on planet earth call the shots in every major upheaval that they cause. Their sphere of activity extends over the entire globe, and even beyond, their ambition and greed for wealth and power knows no bounds, and for them, most of mankind is garbage – “human garbage.” It is also their target to depopulate the globe and maintain a much lower population compared to what we have now.

It was Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild (1840-1915) who once said: “I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.” What was true of the British Empire is equally true of the US Empire, controlled remotely by the London based Elite through the Federal Reserve System. Judged by its consequences, the Federal Reserve System is the greatest con job in human history.

It is sad and painful that man’s most beautiful construction, and the source of most power and wealth on earth, viz. scientific knowledge – the most sublime, most powerful and most organised expression of man’s inherent gift of thought, wonder and awe – became a tool for subjugation of humanity, a very dangerous tool in the hands of a tiny group of men. These men “hire” the scientist and take away, as a matter of right, the power the scientist creates through his inventions. This power is then used for their own purposes, at immense human and material cost to mankind. The goal of this handful of men, the members of the wealthiest families on the planet, the Elite, is a New World Order, a One World Government, under their control.

Secrecy and anonymity is integral to the operations of the Elite as is absolute ruthlessness, deep deception and the most sordid spying and blackmail. The Elite pitches nations against each other, and aims at the destruction of religion and other traditional values, creates chaos, deliberately spreads poverty and misery, and then usurps power placing its stooges in place. These families “buy while the blood is still flowing in the streets” (Rothschild dictum). Wars, “revolutions” and assassinations are part of their tactics to destroy traditional civilisation and traditional religions (as in Soviet Russia), amass wealth and power, eliminate opponents, and proceed relentlessly towards their avowed goal, generation after generation. They operate through covert and overt societies and organisations.

Professor Carroll Quigley wrote:

The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands to be able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in private meetings and conferences.… The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralisation of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury to all other economic groups.

Winston Churchill, who was eventually “bored by it all,” wrote around 1920:

From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, to those of Trotsky, Bela Kun, Rosa Luxembourg, and Emma Goldman, this world wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played a definitely recognisable role in the tragedy of French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the nineteenth century, and now at last, this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads, and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

The High Cabal Exposed by JFK

It was in the dark days of World War II that Churchill referred to the existence of a “High Cabal” that had brought about unprecedented bloodshed in human history. Churchill is also said to have remarked about the Elite: “They have transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia…” (quoted by John Coleman in The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, Global Publications 2006). Who are ‘they’?

Consider the 1961 statement of US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) before media personnel:

The word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society, and we are as a people, inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, secret oaths and secret proceedings. For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy, that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence. It depends on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific, and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published, its mistakes are buried, not headlined, and its dissenters are silenced, not praised, no expenditure is questioned, no secret revealed… I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people.”

Secret societies, secret oaths, secret proceedings, infiltration, subversion, intimidation – these are the words used by JFK!

On June 4, 1963, JFK ordered the printing of Treasury dollar bills instead of Federal Reserve notes (Executive Order 11110). He also ordered that once these had been printed, the Federal Reserve notes would be withdrawn, and the Treasury bills put into circulation. A few months later (November 22, 1963) he was killed in broad daylight in front of the whole world – his brains blown out. Upon assumption of power, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, immediately reversed the order to switch to Treasury bills showing very clearly why JFK was murdered. Another order of JFK, to militarily disengage from the Far East by withdrawing US “advisors” from Vietnam, was also immediately reversed after his death. After the Cuban crisis JFK wanted peaceful non-confrontational coexistence with the Soviet Union and that meant no wars in the world. He knew the next war would be nuclear and there would be no winners.

The defence industry and the banks that make money from war belong to the Elite. The Elite subscribes to a dialectical Hegelian philosophy, as pointed out by Antony Sutton, under which they bring about ‘controlled conflict’. The two world wars were ‘controlled conflicts’! Their arrogance, their ceaseless energy, their focus, their utter disregard for human life, their ability to plan decades in advance, to act on that planning, and their continual success are staggering and faith-shaking.

Statements by men like Disraeli, Wilson, Churchill, JFK and others should not leave any doubt in the mind of the reader about who controls the world. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote in November 1933 to Col. Edward House: “The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centres has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.” It may be recalled that Andrew Jackson, US President from 1829-1837, was so enraged by the tactics of bankers (Rothschilds) that he said: “You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be a revolution before morning.”

Interlocking Structure of Elite Control

In his book Big Oil and Their Bankers in the Persian Gulf: Four Horsemen, Eight Families and Their Global Intelligence, Narcotics and Terror Network, Dean Henderson states: “My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on ‘national security’ grounds. This is ironic since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe.” This is, on the face of it, quite astonishing but it goes to show the US government works not for the people but for the Elite. It also shows that secrecy is paramount in Elite affairs. No media outlet will raise this issue because the Elite owns the media. Secrecy is essential for Elite control – if the world finds out the truth about the wealth, thought, ideology and activities of the Elite there would be a worldwide revolt against it. Henderson further states:

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP Amoco and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with other European and old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch. According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stockholders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.

It is well known that in 2009, of the top 100 largest economic entities of the world, 44 were corporations. The wealth of these families, which are among the top 10% shareholders in each of these, is far in excess of national economies. In fact, total global GDP is around 70 trillion dollars. The Rothschild family wealth alone is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars. So is the case with the Rockefellers who were helped and provided money all along by the Rothschilds. The US has an annual GDP in the range of 14-15 trillion dollars. This pales into insignificance before the wealth of these trillionaires. With the US government and most European countries in debt to the Elite, there should be absolutely no doubt as to who owns the world and who controls it. To quote Eustace Mullins from his book The World Order:

The Rothschilds rule the US through their Foundations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Federal Reserve System with no serious challenges to their power. Expensive ‘political campaigns’ are routinely conducted, with carefully screened candidates who are pledged to the program of the World Order. Should they deviate from the program, they would have an ‘accident’, be framed on a sex charge, or indicted in some financial irregularity.

The Elite members operate in absolute unison against public benefit, against a better life for mankind in which the individual is free to develop his or her innate creativity, a life free of war and bloodshed. James Forrestal, the first Secretary of Defence of the US, became aware of Elite intrigue and had, according to Jim Marrs, accumulated 3,000 pages of notes to be used for writing a book. He died in mysterious circumstances and was almost certainly murdered. His notes were taken away and a sanitised version made public after one year! Just before he died, almost fifteen months before the outbreak of the Korean War, he had revealed that American soldiers would die in Korea! Marrs quotes Forrestal: “These men are not incompetent or stupid. Consistency has never been a mark of stupidity. If they were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake in our favour.” The Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the mother of all these, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, are bodies where decisions about the future of mankind are arrived at. Who set these up and control them? The “international bankers” of course.

In his book The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World, Col. Fletcher Prouty, who was the briefing officer to the President of the US from 1955-1963, writes about “an inner sanctum of a new religious order.” By the phrase Secret Team he means a group of “security-cleared individuals in and out of government who receive secret intelligence data gathered by the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA) and who react to those data.” He states: “The power of the Team derives from its vast intra-governmental undercover infrastructure and its direct relationship with great private industries, mutual funds and investment houses, universities, and the news media, including foreign and domestic publishing houses.” He further adds: “All true members of the Team remain in the power centre whether in office with the incumbent administration or out of office with the hard-core set. They simply rotate to and from official jobs and the business world or the pleasant haven of academe.”

Training the Young for Elite Membership

It is very remarkable as to how ‘they’ are able to exercise control and how ‘they’ always find people to carry out the job, and how is it ‘they’ always make the ‘right’ decision at the right time? This can only be possible if there exists a hidden program of inducting and training cadres mentally, ideologically, philosophically, psychologically and ability-wise, over prolonged periods of time and planting them in the centres of power of countries like the US, UK, etc. This training would begin at a young age in general. There must also be a method of continual appraisal, by small groups of very highly skilled men, of developing situations with ‘their’ men who are planted throughout the major power centres of the world so that immediate ‘remedial’ action, action that always favours Elite interests, can be taken. How does that happen?

It is in finding answers to these questions that the role of secret societies and their control of universities, particularly in the US, assumes deeper importance. The work done by men like Antony Sutton, John Coleman, Eustace Mullins and others is ground breaking. Mankind owes a debt to such scholars who suffer for truth but do not give in. Whenever you trace the money source of important initiatives designed to bring about major wars, lay down policies for the future, enhance control of the Elite over mankind, etc., you will invariably find them linked to the so called banking families and their stooges operating out of Foundations.

In April 2008 I was among approximately 200 Vice Chancellors, Rectors and Presidents of universities from Asia, Africa, Europe and the US at a two day Higher Education Summit for Global Development, held at the US State Department in Washington DC. The Summit was addressed by five US Secretaries, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The real emphasis throughout the Summit was only on one thing – that universities in developing countries operate in partnership with foundations so that global problems could be solved! These are private foundations and the only way to understand this emphasis is to realise the US government is owned by those who own these foundations. As an aside the inaugural address was delivered by the war criminal responsible for millions of deaths in Rwanda, trained in US military institutions, and awarded a doctorate – Dr. Paul Kagame! The very first presentation was made by the CEO of the Agha Khan Foundation!

In a fascinating study of the Yale secret society Skull and Bones, Antony Sutton uncovered numerous aspects of profound importance about this one society. In his book America’s Secret Establishment – An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, Sutton points out there is a set of “Old Line American Families and New Wealth” that dominates The Order (of Skull & Bones) – the Whitney family, the Stimson family, the Bundy family, the Rockefeller family, the Harriman family, the Taft family, the Bush family, and so on. He also points out that there is a British connection:

The links between the Order and Britain go through Lazard Freres and the private merchant bankers. Notably the British establishment also founded a University – Oxford University, and especially All Souls College at Oxford. The British element is called ‘The Group’. The Group links to the Jewish equivalent through the Rothschilds in Britain (Lord Rothschild was an original member of Rhodes’ ‘inner circle’). The Order in the US links to the Guggenheim, Schiff and Warburg families… There is an Illuminati connection.

Every year 15 young men, and very recently women, have been inducted into The Order from Yale students since 1832. Who selects them? A study of the career trajectories of many of those ‘chosen’ shows how they rise to prominence in American life and how their peers ensure these men penetrate the very fabric of important US institutions. They are always there in key positions during war and peace, manipulating and watching ceaselessly.

The influence of the Elite families on the thought processes of nations is carried out through academic institutions and organisations, as well as the media. Sutton writes:

Among academic associations the American Historical Association, the American Economic Association, the American Chemical Society, and the American Psychological Association were all started by members of The Order or persons close to The Order. These are key associations for the conditioning of society. The phenomenon of The Order as the FIRST on the scene is found especially among Foundations, although it appears that The Order keeps a continuing presence among Foundation Trustees… The FIRST Chairman of an influential but almost unknown organisation established in 1910 was also a member of The Order. In 1920 Theodore Marburg founded the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of Disputes, but Marburg was only President. The FIRST Chairman was member William Howard Taft. The Society was the forerunner of the League to Enforce Peace, which developed into the League of Nations concept and ultimately the United Nations.

The United Nations is an instrument of the Elite designed to facilitate the setting up of One World Government under Elite control. The UN building stands on Rockefeller property.

Selecting Future Prime Ministers to Serve the New World Order

In his article, ‘Oxford University – The Illuminati Breeding Ground’, David Icke recounts an incident that demonstrates how these secret societies and groups, working for the Elite, select, train and plan to install their men in key positions. In 1940 a young man addressed a “study group” of the Labor Party in a room at University College Oxford. He stressed that he belonged to a secret group without a name which planned a “Marxist takeover” of Britain, Rhodesia and South Africa by infiltrating the British Parliament and Civil Services. Since the British do not like extremists they dismiss their critics as ‘right-wingers’ while themselves posing as ‘moderates’ (this seems like the anti-Semitism charge by ADL, etc. whenever Israel is criticised). The young man stated that he headed the political wing of that secret group and he expected to be made Prime Minister of Britain some day! The young man was Harold Wilson who became Prime Minister of Britain (1964-70, 1974-76)!

All young men studying at Ivy League universities, and at others, must bear in mind they are being continually scrutinised by some of their Professors with the intention of selecting from amongst them, those who will serve the Elite, and become part of a global network of interlocked covert and overt societies and organisations, working for the New World Order. Some of those already selected will be present among them, mingling with them and yet, in their heart, separated from them by a sense of belonging to a brotherhood with a mission that has been going on for a long time. These young men also know they will be rewarded by advancement in career and also that if they falter they could be killed!

Utter secrecy and absolute loyalty is essential to the continued success of this program. This is enforced through fear of murder or bankruptcy and through a cult which probably takes us back to the times of the pyramids and before. Philosophically ‘they’ believe in Hegelian dialectics through which they justify bringing about horrible wars – euphemistically called ‘controlled conflict’. Their political ideology is ‘collectivism’ whereby mankind has to be ‘managed’ by a group of men, ‘them’, organised for the purpose – a hidden ‘dominant minority’. ‘They’ believe that they know better than ordinary mortals. The Illuminati, the Freemasons, members of other known and unknown secret societies, all mesh together under the wealthiest cabal in human history to take a mesmerised, dormant and battered mankind from one abyss to the next. Former MI6 agent John Coleman refers to a “Committee of 300” that controls and guides this vast subterranean human machinery.

In his book Memoirs, published in 2002, David Rockefeller, Sr. stated that his family had been attacked by “ideological extremists” for “more than a century… Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” That’s it!

Prof. Dr. MUJAHID KAMRAN is Vice Chancellor, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan, and his book The Grand Deception – Corporate America and Perpetual War has just been published (April 2011) by Sang e Meel Publications, Lahore, Pakistan, and is available from www.amazon.co.uk. Prof. Kamran’s website is www.mujahidkamran.com.

This article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 18.

© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, http://www.newdawnmagazine.com. Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.

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The new democracy: Goldman Sachs conquers Europe


The Independent published on 18 November 2011 this revealing article written by Stephen Foley.

What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe

Goldman Sachs Men in the EU

While ordinary people fret about austerity and jobs, the eurozone’s corridors of power have been undergoing a remarkable transformation

The ascension of Mario Monti to the Italian prime ministership is remarkable for more reasons than it is possible to count. By replacing the scandal-surfing Silvio Berlusconi, Italy has dislodged the undislodgeable. By imposing rule by unelected technocrats, it has suspended the normal rules of democracy, and maybe democracy itself. And by putting a senior adviser at Goldman Sachs in charge of a Western nation, it has taken to new heights the political power of an investment bank that you might have thought was prohibitively politically toxic.

This is the most remarkable thing of all: a giant leap forward for, or perhaps even the successful culmination of, the Goldman Sachs Project.

It is not just Mr Monti. The European Central Bank, another crucial player in the sovereign debt drama, is under ex-Goldman management, and the investment bank’s alumni hold sway in the corridors of power in almost every European nation, as they have done in the US throughout the financial crisis. Until Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund’s European division was also run by a Goldman man, Antonio Borges, who just resigned for personal reasons.

Even before the upheaval in Italy, there was no sign of Goldman Sachs living down its nickname as “the Vampire Squid”, and now that its tentacles reach to the top of the eurozone, sceptical voices are raising questions over its influence. The political decisions taken in the coming weeks will determine if the eurozone can and will pay its debts – and Goldman’s interests are intricately tied up with the answer to that question.

Simon Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist, in his book 13 Bankers, argued that Goldman Sachs and the other large banks had become so close to government in the run-up to the financial crisis that the US was effectively an oligarchy. At least European politicians aren’t “bought and paid for” by corporations, as in the US, he says. “Instead what you have in Europe is a shared world-view among the policy elite and the bankers, a shared set of goals and mutual reinforcement of illusions.”

This is The Goldman Sachs Project. Put simply, it is to hug governments close. Every business wants to advance its interests with the regulators that can stymie them and the politicians who can give them a tax break, but this is no mere lobbying effort. Goldman is there to provide advice for governments and to provide financing, to send its people into public service and to dangle lucrative jobs in front of people coming out of government. The Project is to create such a deep exchange of people and ideas and money that it is impossible to tell the difference between the public interest and the Goldman Sachs interest.

Mr Monti is one of Italy’s most eminent economists, and he spent most of his career in academia and thinktankery, but it was when Mr Berlusconi appointed him to the European Commission in 1995 that Goldman Sachs started to get interested in him. First as commissioner for the internal market, and then especially as commissioner for competition, he has made decisions that could make or break the takeover and merger deals that Goldman’s bankers were working on or providing the funding for. Mr Monti also later chaired the Italian Treasury’s committee on the banking and financial system, which set the country’s financial policies.

With these connections, it was natural for Goldman to invite him to join its board of international advisers. The bank’s two dozen-strong international advisers act as informal lobbyists for its interests with the politicians that regulate its work. Other advisers include Otmar Issing who, as a board member of the German Bundesbank and then the European Central Bank, was one of the architects of the euro.

Perhaps the most prominent ex-politician inside the bank is Peter Sutherland, Attorney General of Ireland in the 1980s and another former EU Competition Commissioner. He is now non-executive chairman of Goldman’s UK-based broker-dealer arm, Goldman Sachs International, and until its collapse and nationalisation he was also a non-executive director of Royal Bank of Scotland. He has been a prominent voice within Ireland on its bailout by the EU, arguing that the terms of emergency loans should be eased, so as not to exacerbate the country’s financial woes. The EU agreed to cut Ireland’s interest rate this summer.

Picking up well-connected policymakers on their way out of government is only one half of the Project, sending Goldman alumni into government is the other half. Like Mr Monti, Mario Draghi, who took over as President of the ECB on 1 November, has been in and out of government and in and out of Goldman. He was a member of the World Bank and managing director of the Italian Treasury before spending three years as managing director of Goldman Sachs International between 2002 and 2005 – only to return to government as president of the Italian central bank.

Mr Draghi has been dogged by controversy over the accounting tricks conducted by Italy and other nations on the eurozone periphery as they tried to squeeze into the single currency a decade ago. By using complex derivatives, Italy and Greece were able to slim down the apparent size of their government debt, which euro rules mandated shouldn’t be above 60 per cent of the size of the economy. And the brains behind several of those derivatives were the men and women of Goldman Sachs.

The bank’s traders created a number of financial deals that allowed Greece to raise money to cut its budget deficit immediately, in return for repayments over time. In one deal, Goldman channelled $1bn of funding to the Greek government in 2002 in a transaction called a cross-currency swap. On the other side of the deal, working in the National Bank of Greece, was Petros Christodoulou, who had begun his career at Goldman, and who has been promoted now to head the office managing government Greek debt. Lucas Papademos, now installed as Prime Minister in Greece’s unity government, was a technocrat running the Central Bank of Greece at the time.

Goldman says that the debt reduction achieved by the swaps was negligible in relation to euro rules, but it expressed some regrets over the deals. Gerald Corrigan, a Goldman partner who came to the bank after running the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve, told a UK parliamentary hearing last year: “It is clear with hindsight that the standards of transparency could have been and probably should have been higher.”

When the issue was raised at confirmation hearings in the European Parliament for his job at the ECB, Mr Draghi says he wasn’t involved in the swaps deals either at the Treasury or at Goldman.

It has proved impossible to hold the line on Greece, which under the latest EU proposals is effectively going to default on its debt by asking creditors to take a “voluntary” haircut of 50 per cent on its bonds, but the current consensus in the eurozone is that the creditors of bigger nations like Italy and Spain must be paid in full. These creditors, of course, are the continent’s big banks, and it is their health that is the primary concern of policymakers. The combination of austerity measures imposed by the new technocratic governments in Athens and Rome and the leaders of other eurozone countries, such as Ireland, and rescue funds from the IMF and the largely German-backed European Financial Stability Facility, can all be traced to this consensus.

“My former colleagues at the IMF are running around trying to justify bailouts of €1.5trn-€4trn, but what does that mean?” says Simon Johnson. “It means bailing out the creditors 100 per cent. It is another bank bailout, like in 2008: The mechanism is different, in that this is happening at the sovereign level not the bank level, but the rationale is the same.”

So certain is the financial elite that the banks will be bailed out, that some are placing bet-the-company wagers on just such an outcome. Jon Corzine, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs, returned to Wall Street last year after almost a decade in politics and took control of a historic firm called MF Global. He placed a $6bn bet with the firm’s money that Italian government bonds will not default.

When the bet was revealed last month, clients and trading partners decided it was too risky to do business with MF Global and the firm collapsed within days. It was one of the ten biggest bankruptcies in US history.

The grave danger is that, if Italy stops paying its debts, creditor banks could be made insolvent.  Goldman Sachs, which has written over $2trn of insurance, including an undisclosed amount on eurozone countries’ debt, would not escape unharmed, especially if some of the $2trn of insurance it has purchased on that insurance turns out to be with a bank that has gone under. No bank – and especially not the Vampire Squid – can easily untangle its tentacles from the tentacles of its peers. This is the rationale for the bailouts and the austerity, the reason we are getting more Goldman, not less. The alternative is a second financial crisis, a second economic collapse.

Shared illusions, perhaps? Who would dare test it?

Europe Soverien Debt Crisis Explained. Who Owes Who What?


Who owes the most European Debt?

 

Who is Buying What?

Inter Trader wrote on September 15, 2011, explaining the European Sovereign Debt Crisis:

[The core of the problem was most likely irresponsible lending by banks. A credit bubble was created through banks lending out money to individuals and businesses to acquire assets that proved to be worth less than the amount of the loans. This was especially true in the real estate sector – something we also saw happening in the United States.

When these banks got into trouble because of bad loan practices, the government had to bail them out using public funds. This happened in the United States and it was repeated in Greece and other European countries.

The government of course has no money of its own – it has to raise it either through taxes or through loans. Since tax money is normally used to finance the current budget expenditure, the money to bail out banks had to come from loans. What therefore happened is that the US, Greece and subsequently other European governments issued government bonds to finance these bailouts.

The problem with government bonds is that you have to pay interest on them and when the market starts doubting your ability to repay the loan, the interest rate will become higher and higher. In the end it is a downward spiral – the government takes up more loans to roll over existing ones, but the interest rates keep on getting higher and higher.]

Yesterday for the first time the EuroNews TV stated in a news bulletin that the new PMs of Greece and Italy and other EU officials are Goldman Sachs associates and ex-employees.

What is called “irresponsible lending by banks” is actually a deliberate act of sabotage for the sovereignty of specifically targeted some European states.

It is a replay of the tragic comedy “The Merchant of Venice”.  cutting a iuſt pound of his fleſh

But can the money lenders take their loot without dropping blood?

These debts were  made with evil intentions and they must be either written off or rescheduled by the people without additional usury.

External Debts of Rich Countries:

Country External Debt in US $ PerCaptia in US $ % of GDP
 Luxembourg 1,892,000,000,000 3,759,174 3,443
 Ireland 2,268,310,000,000 495,264 3,616.20
 Switzerland 1,200,000,000,000 154,063 229
 United Kingdom 8,981,000,000,000 144,338 400
 Norway 643,000,000,000 131,220 141
 Belgium 1,241,000,000,000 113,603 266
 Denmark 559,500,000,000 101,084 180
 Sweden 853,300,000,000 91,487 187
 Austria 755,000,000,000 90,128 200
 France 4,698,000,000,000 74,619 182
 Finland 370,800,000,000 68,960 155
 Germany 4,713,000,000,000 57,755 142
 Australia 1,169,000,000,000 52,596 95
 New Zealand 219,589,000,000 50,260 127
 Greece 532,900,000,000 47,636 174
 United States 14,991,308,000,000 47,568 99
 Netherlands 371,028,000,000 47,172 74
 Spain 2,166,000,000,000 47,069 154
 Portugal 497,800,000,000 46,795 217
 Italy 2,223,000,000,000 36,841 108
 Canada 1,009,000,000,000 29,625 64
 European Union 13,720,000,000,000 27,864 85
 Japan 2,441,000,000,000 19,148 45

Financiers’ Reich is Buying Some European Countries


European Countries Sovereign Debt Owed to German Banks

I intend to investigate an assumption that major German and British investment banks and financiers who are the main creditors and lenders for many European countries in the last twenty years deliberately created the current European sovereign debt disasters to gain control over certain countries.

The reason behind this accusation is very logical and clear. To protect investors, normal creditors in any situation shall definitely refrain from lending to any already heavily indebted entity or state.

The questions posed here to readers are:

1- Do you have any idea why these investment banks and financiers provided bad debts?

2- Do you know the names and ownerships of the major investors and creditors to each European country in crisis?

3- Why the EU institutions did not warn and intervene before approving the loans to heavily indebted countries?

4- Why the EU is suddenly very vigorous in dealing with debt default and bankruptcy while they were watching the clear problems in the making?

5- What made elected governments exceed any reasonable debt ceiling and overspend beyond their capacity?

6- Why the essential financial and economic prerequisites of the EU were relaxed and allowed heavily indebted countries to gain membership?

7- How far the EU and the financial markets are legally allowed to topple democratically elected governments and appoint unelected rulers?

8- What are the invisible relationships between the EU institutions and those investment banks and financiers?

9- Why the credit rating system was not applied to states that exceeded reasonable Debt/GDP ratio?

10- Why very rich countries like the USA, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, France, and the UK are the top indebted countries without interference?

I appreciate any information and comments on these questions to let everybody know the truth behind the unholy alliance between bankers; bureaucrats; and senior officials in any country.

Zionists Control World Finances; Shocking Facts from Dr. David Duke


Dr. David Duke

David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was also a former candidate in the Republican presidential primaries in 1992 and in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988. Duke has unsuccessfully run for the Louisiana State Senate, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and Governor of Louisiana.

Duke describes himself as a racial realist, asserting that “all people have a basic human right to preserve their own heritage.” He is a strong advocate of opposition to Zionism as well as what he asserts to be Zionist control of the Federal Reserve Bank, the federal government and the media. Duke supports anti-immigration, both legal and illegal, preservation of what he labels Western culture and traditionalist Christian “family values”, strict Constitutionalism, abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, voluntary racial segregation, and ardent anti-communism and white separatism.

David Duke wrote three books: Finders-Keepers (1976); My Awakening (1998); Jewish Supremacism (2002).

David Duke is campaigning for implementing the following policies:

Jewish Supremacism Book

1- We must break the Zionist control of Wall Street and The Federal Reserve; the IMF; and the World Bank;

2- We must break the Zionist control over the Global media;

3- We must break the Zionist corrupt political influence;

4- Understand that Zionism is a world problem;

5- We must end these insane Zionist wars;

6- We must break the Zionist matrix of power;

7- We must replace Zionist Globalism with freedom & independence for every nation & people.

From: About DavidDuke.com

http://www.davidduke.com/general/about-2_90.html on 11/18/2002

DavidDuke.com is the website of former Louisiana Representative; David Duke, PhD. Rep. Duke has dedicated his life to the freedom and heritage of European American peoples. Rep. Duke has led careers as a successful elected official, author, and activist.

He not only won a seat in the House of Representatives in Louisiana, but he jolted the political establishment by defeating the incumbent governor of Louisiana and garnering huge numbers of votes for Governor and for U.S. Senator. He also was elected in 1996 to the Parish Executive Committee of the largest Republican Party District in Louisiana, St. Tammany Parish where the other elected members chose him unanimously to serve as chairman of the District. He served as chairman until 2000.

Over sixty percent of the European American voters of Louisiana have voted for Rep. Duke in statewide races.

In addition: David Duke has a PhD in History. It was earned at the MAUP University system in Kiev, Ukraine, the largest university system in Ukraine.

David Duke is the author of two books: My Awakening. His latest book, Jewish Supremacism, has now been translated in 14 languages and is a bestseller in many nations. As an activist, Rep. Duke is the President of EURO, the European American Unity and Rights Organization, an organization for European American patriots.

Rep. Duke’s offices are in Mandeville, Louisiana, 30 miles north of New Orleans and he also teaches in Eastern Europe. From his Mandeville office you may select from the David Duke Online Bookstore found on this website and Mr. Duke’s EURO website: http://www.whitecivilrights.com. You will find many of his writings here as well as current spoken and written commentaries on current events.

If you read his writings with an open mind, you will discover a man of both intellect and courage.

Our moral decline: Blood-lust in the streets of Libya suffices for justice


Written by: Patrick Henningsen
http://www.infowars.com, October 20, 2011

It appears that Libya’s former leader Muammar Gaddafi may have been handed down his final verdict by NATO rebels, but it’s perhaps an even more bloody awful fate already suffered by a morally detached western civilization.

Patrick Henningsen

The man who liberated his country from the tyrannical monarchy of King Idris back in 1969… was tried and sentenced by bullet today.

Gaddafi modeled himself after Omar Mukhtar, The Lion of the Desert, the only other man who has led a genuine, independent Libyan resistance, fighting against a brutal Italian colonization in 1927. Yet, our media tell us it’s just another dead tyrant.

This has become the new narrative in the US and western Europe now, where foreign leaders and other non-state actors with brown skin are given lengthy trials through press briefings by suited politicians in places like Washington, London and Paris, echoed by the corporate media until an antagonist is born for public consumption.

Following the White House’s comical staged hoax of SEAL Team 6′s gallant raid on long-dead Osama bin Laden, and with no evidence to show it actually happened other than President Obama’s TV speeches- we get the next public assassination. After all, Obama’s far-fetched tale of the bin-Laden mission somehow vindicated all those innocent lives ruined by US incarceration and outright torture of thousands of young men since the War on Terror officially began in 2001.

Al Jazeera will no doubt play the shaky cell phone video of the man being stripped and dragged through the streets of Sirte by the NATO rebel mob. Somehow they believe, Gaddafi’s brutal post-mortem will vindicate their careless efforts and somehow make right the thousands of innocents who have perished- so that Libya can finally become part of the globalist, debt-based, neoliberal economic IMF system.

The west and its banking elite have nothing left to plunder other than middle class pension funds and incomes, so it is relying on countries in the east and south in order to refill its sadly diminishing coffers.

The same treatment was given to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein. Like Gaddafi and Osama bin Laden, he worked hand in hand with America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 in order to help western intelligence agencies achieve their operational goals, and thus the foreign policy objectives of the US, Great Britain and Israel. Grainy cell phone videos of Saddam’s circus execution somehow vindicated those in the west who liquidated so many innocent Iraqi lives since 1991, and arguably before.

This is the new trend in dispensing due process, in a declining western civilization where blood-lust suffices for justice.

After the protracted media trials of both Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, globalist power-brokers will never allow their war criminals to stand trial and spill the beans on all their dirty little secrets.

Over the last few decades, both Americans and western Europeans have become well-trained media consumers, and absorb their talking points much in the same way that grade school children dutifully repeat after their teachers and walk in single file. As adults, their teachers are CNN, FOX, the BBC, and the newest addition to the state information corps, US CENTCOM’s own Al Jazeera. None of them have any genuine moral or ethical perspective left in their editorial vision. The corporate networks will reserve any real humanitarian compassion for a handful of trapped miners, baby seals, missing Caucasian children and Amanda Knox.

Our new teachers have taught the dutifully-minded among us that when the mob labels a head of state or non-state actor as a tyrant, then regime change must take place, and that this man deserves to die. They have taught us that one dead US soldier is worth more in headlines than 100 dead brown skinned Iraqis, Afghanis, Palestinians, or Libyans- women and children included. That is the overwhelming power of the 21st century media.

Will Libya have anything near the stability it enjoyed over the last 30 years? Will its people enjoy the mountain of state benefits available to them under the Gaddafi rein? Will Libyans be able to retain ownership of their country’s bounty of natural resources, and see the state reinvesting its profits back into their country for the benefit of future generations?

History has taught us that the answer to each and every one of these questions is of course… no.

History has written all over the sands of  the Maghreb of North Africa, and Libya in particular. It has always been under the thumb of one empire or another- from the Romans, the Spanish, the Vatican’s Knights of Malta, the Ottomans, and Mussolini’s Italy.

Libya’s first brush with America came in the early 19th century, when war broke out between the United States and what was then  referred to as Tripolitania, in what came to be known as the Barbary Wars. Only this time around the Barbary pirates are on the other side of the fighting, and they are known the world over by the name of ‘NATO’.

It’s only fitting that this latest chapter of history should be written as follows…

It was clear from day one that the Anglo-American empire, along with its clients like Qatar, were actively supporting and planning to bring destablization to the country. From the very first days of the civil war in Janurary 2011, before the shell casings had even hit the ground, western envoys and consultants worked with known al-Qaida fighters and criminals in Libya to form a new NTC government, a new central bank and a new state oil holding company. NATO were deployed to give brutal air support to these new gangs of rebel paramilitaries, and for nearly 10 months, both those groups killed, tortured, raped and looted everything in their path.

Meanwhile, offshore transnational corporations from the US, Europe and Qatar carved up the country’s assets. Months followed years of instability, infighting and acts of internal retribution followed. The poor became poorer, the rich became richer, organized crime blossomed and thousands of middle class Libyans were allowed to immigrate to the UK, France and Italy.

This would come to be known as Libya’s liberation.

What it means

The UN issued the citation, and NATO came in with the tow truck. Make no mistake, in the real world, NATO is the USA and the USA is NATO. It’s a politically correct way of using military force without being seen to be acting alone as an imperial aggressor. But what about the NTC’s death squads, the theft, the rape, the torture and destruction of citizens’ property, business, and whole lives?

To pass the buck a little further, NATO’s goals and end-game is handed over to Libya’s NTC, this way everyone’s asses are covered.

Politicans in Washington, London and Paris should be proud. They got everything they wanted, and with no dirt under their nails.

If no one in the US, UK, France, the UN or NATO’s technicians of death are held accountable for the sacking and looting of Libya- the crime of the 21st century, then expect that they will simply move forward, and do it again, and again. So who’s next? Syria?

There is no more moral highground, no more western values, no beliefs to use as a back-stop for western civilization.

Was Gaddafi guilty? Is that it, a bullet? He will never be afforded the same trial that anyone reading this article would expect as their god-given right. So what makes any among us believe that we deserve any of these so-called rights?

Who are we kidding?

Source:  http://www.infowars.com/decline-of-western-civilization-blood-lust-in-the-streets-of-libya-suffices-for-justice/

And

http://21stcenturywire.com/2011/10/21/decline-of-the-west-blood-lust-in-the-streets-of-libya-suffices-for-justice/

Ethical Corporatism Tagging System


To achieve healthy capitalism and to protect the people from corporate abuses and corruption a new universal system of labeling for all products and services must be designed and implemented globally. The ingredients of each product or service are composed from not only the physical components but more importantly from the processes involved in the final output.

All corporations and businesses in general must be held accountable and be observed by consumers, employees, the community, and the state departments. For this purpose a tagging system shall be put in place to measure and publicize on any product and any service on the performance of the production business for the total and each of at least the following issues:

People Before Profit

Executive pay
Excessive advertisement
Unfair advertisement
Labor welfare
Unions’ participation
Capital distribution
Political leverage
Environmental responsibility
Social contributions
Fair play
Equal opportunities
Financial transparency
 

Some examples of pioneering organizations and active centers in the field of corporate watch include the following (in alphabetic order):

Alliance for Democracy: http://www.thealliancefordemocracy.org/

American Federation of Labor- Congress of Industrial Organizations: http://www.aflcio.org/

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre: http://www.business-humanrights.org/

Center for Advancement of Public Policy: http://www.capponline.org/

Center for Corporate Policy: http://www.corporatepolicy.org/

Corp-Ethics: http://www.corp-ethics.com/

Corporate Accountability International: http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/

Corporate Accountability Project: http://www.corporations.org/

Corporate Europe Observatory: http://www.corporateeurope.org/

Corporate Governance: http://corpgov.proxyexchange.org/

Corporate Research Project: http://www.corp-research.org/

CorpWatch: http://www.corpwatch.org

Crocodyl.org: http://www.crocodyl.org/

Global Community Monitor: http://gcmonitor.org/

International Center for Corporate Accountability: http://www.icca-corporateaccountability.org

Multinational Monitor: http://multinationalmonitor.org/

The Polaris Institute: http://www.polarisinstitute.org/

About: Living Economies Forum


This is a re-posting compilation of three pages of the very informative website Living Economies Forum about: The People-Centered Development Forum (PCDForum) organization:

The People-Centered Development Forum

LOOKING FOR THE PCDForum WEBSITE?

Our former pcdforum.org, davidkorten.org and greatturning.org sites are now integrated into this livingeconomies.org site. Most material from thse sites of current or historical relevance is available here. You will find most of the content from pcdforum.org (also pcdf.org and developmentforum.net) under the “About Us” or “Library” sections. If you having difficulty finding a particular favorite item, try our site search function at the top right of this page.  Also see “About Us.

Our History

David Korten

The People-Centered Development Forum (PCDForum) [see also “About Us“] is the legal name of our organization. We trace our origin to March 1987, when more than a hundred leaders of non-governmental organizations and other development professionals from forty-two countries met in London for a Symposium on “Development Alternatives: The Challenge for NGOs.” Participants concluded that conventional development has failed and that officially favored prescriptions disempower and impoverish the majority of people and destroy the environment.

It became evident to many of us that the leadership for change would not come from the World Bank, the IMF or official agencies that remained committed to failed prescriptions. Change would depend on voluntary citizen leaders acting outside the establishment.

The founders of the PCDForum were among a then small and lonely band that stood up to challenge the prevailing growth-centered economic development mode. Recognizing the need for a global support group, we launched the PCDForum on January 1, 1990. Our office was in the Makati financial district of Manila, Philippines. A few months after our founding we released Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda authored by David C. Korten, to carry our framing message to the world:

The human burden on the earth’s ecosystem already exceeds sustainable limits. Growth-centered economic policies increase this burden, accelerate the breakdown of the earth’s regenerative systems, and intensify the competition between rich and poor for the earth’s remaining real wealth. The result is a three-fold human crisis of increasing poverty, environmental destruction, and social disintegration. Growth-centered development must be replaced with a development that strengthens the self-reliant capacity of people and communities to better use their own resources to meet their own needs. Because official aid agencies are captive to internal structures and imperatives that serve the flawed logic of growth-centered development, leadership for change must come from citizen volunteers motivated by life-centered values rather than conventional economic and political rewards.

From 1990 through 1997 the Forum maintained an Information Service that distributed path-breaking think-pieces to cooperating publications around the world. By the end of 1991, the Forum had signed on 86 leading intellectual activists from 31 countries to as contributing editors who made regular contributions. By the end of 1997, some 200 people had served as PCDForum Contributing Editors at one time or another. They were, however, no longer a lonely and isolated band and the PCDForum Information Service no longer fulfilled a distinctive role.

Recognizing that the issue went well beyond the dysfunctions of myopic official aid agencies that the United States is the primary driver of the dysfunction, we moved the Forum’s office from Manila to New York City in 1992 and gradually began to focus our attention on the institutions of corporate globalization.

In 1994 we joined a parallel conversation with a global group of activists who formed the International Forum on Globalization (IFG). For nearly 10 years, the IFG served as the leading voice of a growing global citizen resistance against corporate globalization.

The PCDForum launched When Corporations Rule the World, by David Korten in October 1995. It become an international best seller and opened the Forum’s access to radio, television, and mass print media reaching millions of people. The second edition, which was released in April 2001, documented the global resistance movement that emerged subsequent to the release of the first edition.

It became increasingly evident that although resistance against a destructive economic system is essential, it only slows the damage. Change depends on active citizen engagement in building alternatives. To this end, the Forum took a lead role in establishing YES! Magazine dedicated to advancing awareness of positive alternatives and assisting individuals in finding their place of contribution toward their realization.

In March 1999 we released The Post-Corporate World:
Life After Capitalism
, which applies principles derived from the study of living systems to the creation of economies that serve life rather than money. This led to our contribution in 1991 to founding the Business
Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) to support local organizers in rebuilding local economies grounded in living system principles.

A few months later, the historic November 1999 Seattle protest against the World Trade Organization (WTO) by a broad alliance of labor, religious, environmental, youth, peace, women’s, gay and lesbian, human rights, sustainable agriculture, food safety and other groups marked a defining moment in the emergence of what eventually became known as global civil society. Successful disruption of the WTO negotiations inspired millions of people around the world to participate in similar protest actions in an expression of global solidarity.

In 2005, we launched The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community to put these events into a larger evolutionary and historical context. We focused on communicating and mobilizing around the Great Turning framework until the global financial collapse of September 2008. The collapse focused global attention on Wall Street excesses and opened an unprecedented window of opportunity to address the need for economic system transformation.

We launched the 1st edition of Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth in January 2009 to make the case that reforming the Wall Street system is not an answer. It must be replaced. We simultaneously joined with the Institute for Policy Studies in DC, YES! Magazine, and BALLE to form the New Economy Working Group to further develop the New Economy framework and advance its implementation.

The updated and expanded 2nd edition of Agenda for a New Economy was released in June 2010 as a report of the New Economy Working Group.

The Forum’s Defining Books

These books represent the progression of my primary contributions to framing a New Economy grounded in living system principles. Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning, The Post-Corporate World, When Corporations Rule the World, and Getting to the 21st Century defined critical stages in the Forum’s now more than 20 year campaign to change the stories that frame the economic discourse of our time. <See The Forum and the Economic Story Revolution> Note that this list puts the most recent first. To follow their story in chronological sequence, start from the bottom with Getting to the 21st Century.

Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth
A Declaration of Independence from Wall Street.

Agenda for a New Economy 2nd edition cover“The most important book to emerge thus far on the economic crisis. David Korten provides real solutions.”

— Peter Barnes, cofounder of Working Assts and author of Capitalism 3.0

This updated and expanded 2nd edition of Agenda is my most current and comprehensive effort to lay out a holistic New Economy agenda and a path to its realization. It brings together the spiritual, evolutionary, and historical perspectives of The Great Turning, the living systems perspective of The Post-Corporate World, and the critical organizational systems analysis of the failings global corporate capitalism of the 1st edition of When Corporations Rule the World, and the insights into the emergence and dynamic of global civil society of the 2nd edition of Corporations. The underlying message is clear and simple: Wall Street is corrupt beyond repair and serves no useful functions now better addressed in other ways. It must be replaced.

This new edition of Agenda is issued as a report of the New Economy Working Group (NEWGroup), which I helped to form following the financial crash of 2008 to take to the next level the policy framework outlined in the first edition of Agenda. The result of a year and a half of NEWGroup effort is a considerably more coherent and holistic systems agenda. It launched on June 12, 2010 in Washington, DC in the shadow of the capital building.

Perhaps the most significant advance is in the treatment of the money system as a system of power and the examination of critical money system design options and their implications. This provides the basis for a more systemic and nuanced treatment of key design choices needed to shift the values focus from money to life and the locus of power from global financial institutions to people and place based communities—call it a transition to real markets and democracy.

The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community:

(2006) I wrote The Great Turning to put the economic crisis in its deeper spiritual, evolutionary, and historical context. It became evident following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers that the global citizen movement that emerged in response to the devastation wrought by corporate globalization needed a larger organizing framework. Events following the attack, drew attention to the fact that  the  rise of modern corporate power is only a modern manifestation of much deeper psychological, cultural, and institutional forces that have shaped the dominant human societies for 5,000 years. I joined with Nicanor Perlas from the Philippines and Vandana Shiva from India to examine the implications. We presented our conclusions in a discussion paper titled “Global Civil Society: The Path Ahead” released in November 2002. This paper in turn became a foundation for The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.  For more on this book and why I wrote it see “Everybody Wants to Rules the World: David Korten on Putting an End to Global Competition,” an interview by Arnie Cooper published in The Sun, September 2007.

David Korten never fails to shake me out of my complacency, and reveal complacencies I didn’t even know I had. This work is a stunning and compassionate tour de force, calling on history, science, economics and our human goodwill to illuminate the fact that we are at a fundamental choice point. I can’t stop thinking about the issues he raises nor what I’m going to do with my awakened consciousness. Thank you David.
—Margaret J. Wheatley, author Leadership and the New Science

Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible

The International Forum on Globalization (IFG) played a defining role in exposing the reality of corporate globalization and inspiring the global resistance movement. It was one of my primary affiliations during this period and a major influence on my work. The IFG formed around a shared critique. As that critique gave impetus to popular mobilization around the world, other IFG members joined my call to move beyond resistance and seize the initiative by framing and advancing a positive alternative to the free-trade, market deregulation regime being advanced by the world’s transnational corporations. We decided to produce a book length report presenting such a framework. I was an active member of the international team of 21 movement leaders who produced Alternatives to Economic Globalization under the editorial leadership of John Cavanagh and Jerry Mander. Our report spells out a more coherent and fully developed alternatives to the current rules and institutions of economic globalization than any previous such effort.

The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism  (1999)

This visionary, life-affirming sequel to When Corporations Rule the world sold over 25,000 copies in eight languages.

As the emerging global resistance movement against corporate globalization’s assault against democracy, community, and the natural environment gained momentum, it became clear that any individual victory would be only temporary until the life-destructive economic system is replaced by a life-serving system. We needed a compelling framework to demonstrate the power and natural potential of a radically decentralized community rooted economic system that defines a positive alternative to the ills of both capitalism and socialism.

I found the needed framework in insights from a small band of biologists working at the cutting edge of biology who were unraveling the secrets of life’s extraordinary capacity self-organize, innovate, and ever advance the boundaries of the possible. Their path breaking findings about life’s capacity for creative self-organization became the foundation of The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism, which makes the translation from biological systems to economic systems to demonstrate the true potential of rule-based market economies that honor the foundational assumptions of grounded market theory.

When Corporations Rule the World (1995 & 2001)

Classic international best-seller with worldwide sales over 120,000 copies sold in fifteen languages.

As Fran and I moved from Manila to New York City in 1992, it was becoming ever more clear that the economic dysfunctions we witnessed in Asia were systemic, global, and a consequence a global consolidation of corporate power. Far from bringing universal prosperity, peace, and democracy, corporate globalization was spreading deprivation, violence, and political corruption.

I flew back to the Philippines in October for a ten day retreat in Baguio with a small group of Asian NGO leaders to reflect on  Asia’s development experience and its implications for future NGO strategies in the region. The conclusions of this retreat became the basis of a collective report titled “Economy, Ecology & Spirituality: A theory and Practice of Sustainability,” which outlined many of the ideas developed in my subsequent books and served as the foundation for  the first edition of When Corporations Rule the World.  One conclusion of this retreat that has shaped the work of the Forum ever since is that the need is not for an alternative theory of development, but rather a theory of a just and sustainable society that embraces the spiritual dimension of life and community.

I became involved in the earlier gatherings of the International Forum (IFG) in 1994 as I was completing the manuscript for the book, which was in turn influenced by those conversations with many of the leaders of what was to become a global resistance movement against corporate globalization, which was in turn shaped in part by the messages of the book. The first edition was launched in the Fall of 1995, just before the historic IFG teach-in at New York’s Riverside Church that brought the issue of corporate globalization to the fore of the consciousness of progressive leaders from throughout North America.

The first edition makes no mention of a global resistance movement, because it was not yet visible by the time of the launch. From the Fall of 1994 forward the resistance quickly grew in size and visibility. The success of the November 1999 demonstrations against the WTO in Seattle gave the movement global visibility, disrupted the process of multilateral trade negotiations, and energized ever larger protests. By 2000, When Corporations Rule the World had become an international classic. At the urging of my publisher I wrote an updated 2nd edition that launched in early 2001 with five new chapters on the further advance of the global corporate takeover and the nature and dynamic of the then powerful global resistance.

Getting to the 21st Century: Voluntary Action and the Global Agenda (1990)

I wrote or edited 6 books prior to Getting to the 21st Century, all addressed primarily to people working on problems of Third World development. This one represents a critical transition to a focus on global systems failure and the essential role of citizen action in addressing it. I was critical of the drive for growth at all costs, but growth was so at the forefront of the consciousness of the audience I hoped to reach that I equivocated with a call for a different kind of growth that begins with policies to increase equity and builds growth on that foundation. I largely finessed the larger issue, as so many economists still do, of what Herman Daly famously called the “impossibility theorem” that infinite growth is possible on a finite planet.

I continue, however, to hold to the book’s central message that our most powerful government institutions lack the capacity for self-transformation. Therefore, the essential transformational system change necessarily depends on the leadership of people willing to forgo conventional institutional financial and political rewards. Getting to the 21st Century thus anticipated the emergence of global civil society as a people power counter to the forces of corporate empire and framed the initial guiding vision of the People-Centered Development Forum (PCDF).

About Us

Our Website

This website integrates three previous sites maintained by David Korten and the People-Centered Developments Forum (PCDForum): davidkorten.org, greatturning.org and pcdforum.org. It serves as the web home of David Korten, the PCDForum, and the Forum’s work on the themes defined by our two most recent books: Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth and The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community.

Most websites reflect the chaos and clutter of modern sound-bite communication. Our goal with this Living Economies Forum Website is to help our visitors cut through the clutter to see and understand the big picture from a systems perspective. We undertake this challenge not as an academic exercise, but because we believe a systems framework is essential to effective action to create a future that works for all our children.

In addition, we have designed this site to serve as a portal to our partner organizations and to David Korten’s current thoughts and commentary on Twitter, Facebook, and his blog at yesmagazine.org.

Founded in 1990 as the People-Centered Development Forum, the Living Economies Forum works with and through partner organizations and a circle of extraordinary colleagues to articulate and communicate framing ideas that light the path to a New Economy grounded in positive living system principles that recognize life’s extraordinary capacity for cooperative self-organization.

We are a small organization with an ambitious vision and a proud history paralleling the historic emergence of global civil society. [See The Forum and the Economic Story Revolution.] We are currently based  in the United States near Seattle, Washington on Bainbridge Island.

Since the time of our founding, we have been a global leader in efforts to expose the fallacies and illusions relating to economic growth models, corporate led economic globalization, and the Wall Street phantom-wealth machine. We are currently focused on advancing awareness of New Economy alternatives based on real-democracy and real-markets.

Our Logo

Our spiral logo symbolizes life’s continuing process of renewal as the dying of the old gives way to the birthing of the new. It is evocative of the Ollin, an ancient Aztec symbol for movement and evolution. Here it signifies this historical moment when we humans may perceive and actualize new possibilities latent in our being.

Our Name

When the Forum was founded in 1990, our defining concern was that Third World development programs and policies too often gave greater priority to producing financial returns than to improving the lives of people. We observed millions of people being displaced from the lands and waters that were their source of livelihoods to make way for “development” projects that served those already better off.

We founded the People-Centered Development Forum to advance a dialogue aimed at making people the centerpiece of development. That was more than 20 years ago.

Our analysis, language, and reach have since evolved. To serve people, the economy must serve the whole of life and the very meaning of the term development has become corrupted beyond redemption. We must come to think of economies as flows of life energy rather than flows of money. Thus, we present ourselves here as the Living Economies Forum devoted to defining a living future of living communities, service by living economies comprised of living enterprises with living owners. We support living markets of the sort envisioned by Adam Smith, who recognized that markets work best when they are predominantly local and operate within a framework of shared moral principles and sensible rules.

Our Organization

We have two full-time staff. David Korten serves as president and Kat Gjovik serves as director of communications and outreach. We have a five member governing board, an international advisory board, four primary partner organizations, and a advisory panel of of Great Turning navigator advisers. We remain small by choice to maintain our ability to respond quickly and flexibly to emergent opportunities. We achieve scale by working with and through other organizations and influential colleagues, which allows us to achieve a level of influence far beyond our modest size.

Our Vision

We envision a planetary system of interlinked locally-rooted, living-wealth economies that mimic the living structures and dynamics of Earth’s biosphere and support ecological balance, a just distribution of Earth’s real wealth, and a living democracy inclusive of all beings.

Our Mission

We contribute to creating a New Economy supportive of this vision by working with and through partner organizations to:

  • Articulate its cultural and institutional design characteristics;
  • Raise public awareness of the possibilities, requirements, and path to its realization;
  • Develop supporting theory and practice;
  • Provide tools for civil society organizations engaged in advancing the necessary cultural and institutional transition.

Our Theory of Change

We believe that transformational system change is most likely to be achieved through a process of emergence and succession that draws inspiration from forest ecology. Organizational change practitioner Margaret Wheatley says it well.

Once an emergent phenomenon has appeared, it can’t be changed by working backwards, by changing the local parts that gave birth to it. You can only change an emergent phenomenon by creating a countervailing force of greater strength. This means that the work of change is to start over, to organize new local efforts, connect them to each other, and know that their values and practices can emerge as something even stronger.
—Margaret Wheatley

We see virtually no prospect that the Wall Street system will transform itself from within. Change depends on citizen’s working from outside the establishment to create from the bottom up a New Economy based on new values and institutions. As they grow the New Economy into being, it provides others with ever more  diverse and attractive opportunities to redirect their investment, employment, and shopping choices from the old to the new. As people thus redirect their life energy to the New Economy from the Old Economy, the New Economy becomes ever stronger and more vibrant.

Our Strategy

We think of ourselves as a movement building catalyst working with a select group of individual and organizational partners to advance a three-fold strategy for navigating a Great Turning from Empire to Earth Community.

The Forum Archive of selected publications and presentations provides a record of the earlier phases of our work when our focus was on the patterns of economic development in the world’s low income countries.

  1. Change the framing stories of the culture to accelerate the awakening of a new consciousness of our species potential to create vibrant self-organizing, life-serving societies and economies based on real markets and real democracy. YES! Magazine is our lead partner on changing the story.
  2. Create a new economic reality through citizen action to build from the bottom up a global system of local living economies. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies is our lead partner on creating a new living economy reality.
  3. Change the rules to favor behavior and institutions that support ecological balance, equitable distribution, and living democracy over behavior and institutions that support environmental destruction, wealth concentration, and political corruption. The Institute for Policy Studies is our lead partner on changing the rules.

Historically, our primary contribution has been to element #1: changing the framing stories of the culture.  This aligns with our distinctive competence and will continue to be our primary focus. Geographically, our focus is on advancing the awakening in the United States—the world’s one remaining self-proclaimed Empire.

The source: the Living Economies Forum

You will find many articles of David Korten, co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine, on his blog which is on YES! Magazine Blogs

YES! Magazine has Ongoing coverage of the people’s movement #OccupyWallStreet to take back our democracy and build a new economy.