$75 Billion on Intelligence

That's how much per year the U.S. Federal Government spends on intelligence. That is a whopping 11.5% of the $650 billion defense budget:

The head of US intelligence has disclosed for the first time the overall cost of Washington's spending on intelligence in one year.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said on Tuesday that the US spends $75 billion a year on intelligence, including military-related activities.

Blair gave the full budget figure as he delivered his 2009 National Intelligence Strategy, a blueprint outlining the priorities for the next four years, AFP reported. ...

Budgets for the United States' 16 intelligence agencies and their 200,000 employees were a closely-guarded secret until 2007.

If your aren't scared of agencies like the CIA and NSA already, you probably will be soon.

UN Calls for a 'Bank of the World'

To further the claim about the possibility of a one world currency being established, the United Nations has just called for a "Bank of the World". The primary goal of this bank is to establish a new currency that will supplant the dollar as the world's reserve currency:

The United Nations has called for the establishment of a new global reserve currency to be overseen by a bank of the world in an effort to reduce the role of the Dollar in international trade.

Details of the proposal were outlined in a report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development. The report also calls for the new global reserve bank to monitor and manage the national exchange rates of member states.

“There’s a much better chance of achieving a stable pattern of exchange rates in a multilaterally-agreed framework for exchange-rate management,” Heiner Flassbeck, co-author of the report and a UNCTAD director, told Bloomberg News.

“An initiative equivalent to Bretton Woods or the European Monetary System is needed.” said Flassbeck.

The most likely end result of this is a one world currency. A one world currency is also a necessary and sufficient condition for the establishment of a one world government:

The creation of a de facto world currency to supplant the Dollar would likely lead to a complete collapse of the greenback, of which trillions are held in in foreign exchange reserves by many foreign countries.

As we have repeatedly warned, the introduction of a new global currency system is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer hands.

Furthermore, a global central bank will establish a de facto financial dictatorship which will wield power over the economies of every country on the planet with no accountability whatsoever.

Protesting = Terrorism Part II

A couple of months ago, I detailed how a Department of Defense training manual described protesting as "low level" terrorism. Now we have fake protesters protesting in an "anti-terrorism" drill in Fort Lee in Virgina.

About a dozen protesters held posters and chanted, "No more hate! No more hate!"

The base's law enforcement made sure the demonstrators stayed calm and outside Fort Lee's perimeters. ...

Fort Lee law-enforcement, civilian and military personnel were simulating a protest as part of a three-day anti-terrorism [emphasis mine] and force-protection exercise at the Army base.

Notice how the article blatantly equates protesting with terrorism. They don't even try to mask propaganda for the police state anymore.

China to buy $50B of IMF bonds

Although it is nice to see China dumping US bonds, I don't know what to think about the fact that China is buying the first bonds ever issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Either this will just be a replacement for the dollar as the world's reserve currency, or I fear it could also morph into a kind of one-world currency, as it is being issued by an international organization. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The Chinese government has agreed to purchase up to $50 billion worth of International Monetary Fund bonds, the first such notes in the fund's history, the IMF said Wednesday.

The global organization said the note purchase agreement "offers China a safe investment instrument," and is part of a broader plan to help the fund weather the economic downturn.

The IMF announced plans to issue bonds to member countries in June, as part of a plan to help bolster its resources. China expressed interest at that time in purchasing the notes.

Other countries reportedly interested in purchasing the IMF bonds include Russia and India.

The bonds would be denominated in Special Drawing Rights, a unit based on a basket of member-state's currencies and used by the IMF for accounting. Currently, one Special Drawing Right is worth roughly $1.56.

The IMF said in a statement that the Chinese purchase will help "boost the Fund's capacity to help its membership -- particularly the developing and emerging market countries -- weather the global financial crisis, and facilitate an early recovery of the global economy."

The purchase agreement was signed by IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn and People's Bank of China Deputy Gov. Yi Gang, the IMF said. China had originally said in June it was interested in buying the IMF bonds.

Chinese officials have previously held up the IMF as a possible source for a world reserve currency to supplement or replace the dominant role of the U.S. dollar.

Fed Official: Real Unemployment at 16 Percent

It seems more and more people realize that the official unemployment statistics are bogus:

The real US unemployment rate is 16 percent if persons who have dropped out of the labor pool and those working less than they would like are counted, a Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

"If one considers the people who would like a job but have stopped looking -- so-called discouraged workers -- and those who are working fewer hours than they want, the unemployment rate would move from the official 9.4 percent to 16 percent, said Atlanta Fed chief Dennis Lockhart.

He underscored that he was expressing his own views, which did "do not necessarily reflect those of my colleagues on the Federal Open Market Committee," the policy-setting body of the central bank.

If you count those people as unemployed, and get rid of the ridiculous Birth-Death model, the rate would be at least 20% unemployment.

Court Orders Fed to Disclose Bailout Details

On November 7, 2008, Bloomberg LP filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the details of the Federal Reserve's "emergency loan" operations (aka bailouts). The Fed declared that the information wasn't covered, and therefore they weren't obligated to disclose that information. A New York District Judge has rejected the Fed's claim and ruled in favor of Bloomberg LP:

The Federal Reserve must make records about emergency lending to financial institutions public within five days because it failed to convince a judge the documents should be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Manhattan Chief U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska rejected the central bank’s argument that the records aren’t covered by the law because their disclosure would harm borrowers’ competitive positions. The collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression,” according to the lawsuit that led to yesterday’s ruling.

The Fed has refused to name the borrowers, the amounts of loans or the assets put up as collateral under 11 programs, saying that doing so might set off a run by depositors and unsettle shareholders. Bloomberg LP, the New York-based company majority-owned by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, sued Nov. 7 on behalf of its Bloomberg News unit.

“When an unprecedented amount of taxpayer dollars were lent to financial institutions in unprecedented ways and the Federal Reserve refused to make public any of the details of its extraordinary lending, Bloomberg News asked the court why U.S. citizens don’t have the right to know,” said Matthew Winkler, the editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News. “We’re gratified the court is defending the public’s right to know what is being done in the public interest.”

I'm really starting to lose my support for an audit of the Federal Reserve. Don't get me wrong, I would love a full blown non politicized audit, but I think an audit of the Fed will be politicized and will most likely bring about formal political control of the Fed. I think FOIAs against the Fed are decent substitutes for a full blown audit.

Bernanke to Be Nominated for Fed Chair

This is pretty good news to me. Even though I believe Bernanke has done a terrible job, I would still pick him to be the next Fed Chair over Janet Yellen and Larry Summers. Yellen is a wild card to me, and I think Summers would totally politicize the Fed (I would say currently the Fed is about 75% politicized). Even though I would rather see the Fed abolished, it will be fun to watch Bernanke continue to be pummeled by congress.