Solargate: Obama’s Big Green Scandal – Americans Bail out European Banks Again – Ron Paul: Restore Sound Money, Legalize Competing Currencies

SOLARGATE: Obama’s Big Green Scandal That Won’t Go Away

Patrick Henningsen
Infowars.com
September 16, 2011

In the first year of his presidency, George W. Bush was under siege. At that time, he had appeared to win his war in Afghanistan, only to find himself tangled in another story, a tale of corporate greed and political corruption made by the hands of a company known as Enron.

Back then, it was the new energy brokerage houses and the new energy futures market that drove the hubris, and the greed of men like Ken Lay. Today in 2011, Barrack Obama now finds himself in the midst of his own ‘Enron moment’, but this time it’s political favouritism and a seemingly bottomless pit of green government stimulus handouts that has driven his green juggernaut into a ravine.

The Enron scandal saw, among other crimes, the savings and retirement funds of tens of thousands of employees disappear when the politically connected energy giant went bankrupt overnight, but it was the cronyism- the company’s direct connections to Bush, Cheney and other insiders which left the worst taste in America’s mouth. Last week, deja vu hit the Obama White House, as his favourite green pet- solar energy firm Solyndra, managed to do an overnight disappearing act with over $500 million in taxpayer funds. What’s worse is that just like Enron, the solar energy firm’s connections go right up through Washington, and right up to the President himself.

From a policy level, it’s a complete wash out due to the fact that despite over half a billion dollars in Federal Financing Bank handouts, Solyndra did not manage to create any new ‘green jobs’. On an insider corruption level, things are looking even bleaker.

Indeed, in the Obama White House, just as it was in the Bush White House, money buys influence, and more importantly, money also buys business opportunities. Apparently, when Solyndra first applied for its green subsidies, auditors at the Department of Energy (DOE) had serious doubts about the company’s financial strength, yet, they were still fast-tracked for one the biggest green subsidies in US history. Jonathan Silver is executive director of the Loan Programs Office, and is the man who signed off on Solyndra’s loan. Will he thrown under the bus later, if the investigation reaches Congressional hearings? The plot thickens.

The $500 million question is why this firm was allowed to win such a large handout if its fundamentals did not pass grade? The answer to that question is a man by the name of George Kaiser, an Oklahoma billionaire and a major investor in Solyndra, who also happened to be… a key fundraiser for Obama’s 2008 election campaign. But it gets worse.

When Solyndra when down under Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, you would think that the US taxpayer would be first in line as a creditor who hoped to recoup its $500 million loss. Not so. First in line was… George Kaiser, who managed to pocket his initial $75 million investment before anyone else got to the butchers table.

In an ABC report, Kaiser, like with every inner circle Obama Democrat, moved quickly to place the blame on our far eastern neighbours.“Solyndra’s collapse saying the solar firm faced “serious challenges in the marketplace, especially the drastic decline in solar panel prices during the past two years caused in part by subsidies provided by the government of China to Chinese solar panel manufacturers”, said Kaiser.

Now there is an ethical and perhaps criminal element to Obama’s green scandal. Like with Enron, where thousands of employee retirement accounts were pilfered away by its cowboy executives, Solyndra’s employees were informed literally overnight, that their company was closed and was so broke, that there would not even be a severance cheque waiting for them. But it turns out that insiders in Washington did know the company was in trouble long before it closed its doors last week. The question now is who knew. Which Washington insiders had off-loaded their stocks and shares in the months before the solar manufacturer went down the drain?

Criminal proceeding will certainly follow should investigative authorities come up with any information pointing to gross insider trading and financial malfeasance. At the orders of the DOE’s Inspector General, the FBI have now already raided the offices of Solyndra, seizing all its files, as well as raided the homes of Solyndra executives, seizing their computers and related company documents.

The reality of Obama’s green revolution in 2011 is that, despite his pledge to handout $38.6 billion in Federal loan guarantees to companies like Solyndra, a promise to create 65,000 “green” jobs has only produced a rather pathetic 3,545 permanent jobs- this after giving out almost half the allocated amount so far, according to the DOE.

One only needs to do the math, and you will discover what every other developed country around the globe already knew in 2008- that the cost per green job is hardly worth the financial pain and suffering.

Unquestionably, this scandal will throw into question every other ‘green jobs’ award that Obama’s White House has given out since 2008, as well as severely damage confidence in any other DOE projects on the table, or in the future.

Now, it is perhaps only a question of time before the investigation reaches the Congress hearing level, where Democrats will be hoping to push a major investigation past the election next November 2012. In the meantime, GOP opponents on Capitol Hill have already caught the scent of political blood left by Obama’s big green debacle. In a recent Washington Post article, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) exclaimed, “My goodness. We should be reviewing every one of these loan guarantee”. Audit baby audit.

Early indications imply that the sheer size and scope of Obama’s “Solargate” scandal leave us with the impression that this may only be the tip of a much, much larger iceberg. It will be Obama’s first classic Pennsylvania Avenue scandal he has had to face in his first term, one in which we will discover the true quality of this President’s tephlon coating.

Above all, this scandal underlines the very same issues which were present during, and which grew out of the Enron days, because Obama’s “green economy” rides squarely on the back of some very questionable “science” which endorses a belief in Al Gore’s universal theory of man-made global warming and climate change. From this idea also sprung a vision whereby the people of the world would one day be buying and selling their carbon emissions in a carbon marketplace, a market designed by Ken Lay himself. It seems that with Solargate, the house of cards is well and truly coming down.

With Enron it, was pure hubris and greed, combined with opportunity. With Solyndra, it is green hubris and green greed, combined with opportunity. When you get right down to it, they are no different.

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Federal Reserve to Bail Out European Banks (Again!)

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Written by Charles Scaliger   –    New American

Friday, 16 September 2011 09:49

To the list of mega-corporations bailed out by the United States government, we now must add — Europe. In an announcement that rocked financial markets worldwide, the European Central Bank announced today a concerted effort in combination with four other major central banks — the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Switzerland, and yes, the United States Federal Reserve — to use dollars rather than euros in an attempt to paper over the European Union’s economic woes.Starting in October, the Federal Reserve and other major central banks will begin auctioning allotments of dollars to the European Central Bank, which will then use the new money to shore up shaky European megabanks. The allotments, which will have three-month maturities and will be structured like typical repurchase operations (“repos”), will be issued against euro-denominated collateral and repaid, with interest, in dollars. That, at least, is the theory.Currency swaps involving the Federal Reserve and other central banks are nothing new, and have been a focal concern of Fed opponents like Congressman Ron Paul, who has long suggested that much of the Fed’s financial chicanery has been carried out in the form of such currency deals with foreign central banks, in total secrecy. This time around, the deal is being touted openly as an unprecedented exercise in international coordination by the world’s central banks, a decisive move to solve Europe’s long-running sovereign debt crisis. Under the terms of the arrangement, the Fed and other central banks will deal with the European Central Bank, which will then disburse dollars to European commercial banks as it deems necessary. There is no cap on the amount of dollars that the Fed may provide to the ECB under the terms of the swap arrangment, which was first agreed to in principle in May 2010. An earlier swap facility, created by the Fed in 2007 in response to the global financial crisis, had expired in February 2010. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, applauded the upcoming currency swaps, telling CNBC that the action “shows they will do what it takes to maintain stability in the financial system.” John Ryding, a former economist for the Bank of England, also applauded next month’s launch as a sign that Europe’s finances were finally being brought under control. “They could open up the swap lines tomorrow if they wanted to,” Ryder told CNN. “By starting in almost a month’s time, it looks like there’s no clear present danger.” The markets responded with ovations as well, with European bank stocks and American stocks generally being buoyed in the wake of the announcement. Wrote one analyst of the Fed’s participation in the latest action, “Given how weak the U.S. economy is right now, we think the Fed is cognizant of the spillover risks from a European banking crisis. Providing dollar funding appears to be a low cost option.” As usual, the latest liquidity legerdemain from the Federal Reserve has elicited short-term effusions of optimism — surely this time, Bernanke and company will get it right! But currency swaps are just more smoke and mirrors designed to stave off — yet again — the inevitable collapse of Western economies drowning in debt and addicted to easy money and credit. This time around, the Fed isn’t “injecting liquidity” into domestic finance, but into European banks, with the ECB as an intermediary. While other banks will be able to offer the ECB some of their holdings in dollars, the Fed can simply print as many dollars as it pleases and dump them on gullible Europeans. The consequence, of course, will be further erosion of the dollar worldwide. Since Bretton Woods in 1944, the United States has enjoyed the unexampled ability to print dollars at will and export them to the rest of the world. The result has been transgenerational inflation against a backdrop of boom and bust, with every economic crisis being an opportunity to turn on the printing presses. That the rest of the world has accepted this state of affairs for so long is perplexing, since it has allowed the United States to enrich itself at the expense of everybody else — or at least, everybody willing to accept American fiat currency (a currency unbacked by a precious commodity). But America has paid a price, too, in the form of an Olympian national debt that now threatens to drive our country into bankruptcy. And in spite of the abysmal failure of every effort by the Fed and the U.S. government to stimulate the economy back to life, the Fed is going to embark yet again on a program of bailing out financial elites with taxpayer-backed dollars. And what if the ECB and the entire EU falls apart as a result of the debt crisis (which cannot and will not be solved by printing money)? Italy and Spain are faltering, and Greece has all but been given permission to default. A Greek default would likely trigger defaults in Ireland and Portugal for starters, events which by themselves could cause the entire EU to unravel. What then will happen to all of those loaned dollars which the ECB has promised to repay? The Federal Reserve, without so much as a congressional by-your-leave (let alone constitutional authority) has been playing Russian Roulette with the American economy ever since the onset of the financial crisis, throwing bad money after bad and producing no outcome other than lengthening and deepening the crisis. Sooner or later, in an event economists like to call “capitulation,” the global markets will tumble to the reality that no amount of debt and stimulus will cure our malaise; only the shock therapy that the free market provides will do that. When that realization finally dawns, currencies will collapse, stocks and bonds will implode, and debtors, including sovereign debtors, will default. The world that will rise from the ashes of that event will look very different from the world we live in now. When that time of reckoning arrives, we may at least hope that the Federal Reserve will finally be abolished, and that Americans will understand clearly the monetary fraud that has been perpetrated on them. Until they do, the Federal Reserve will continue to print dollars for bailing out foreigners. ——————————————————————————-

Ron Paul Would Restore Sound Money by Legalizing Competing Currencies

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Written by Larry Greenley   –    New American

Friday, 16 September 2011 11:56

On September 13, 2011, Ron Paul chaired a hearing before his Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology subcommittee entitled “Road Map to Sound Money: A Legislative Hearing on H.R. 1098 and Restoring the Dollar.” This hearing was held in support of H.R. 1098, the “Free Competition in Currency Act of 2011,”a bill that Paul had introduced on March 15, 2011.This bill has three purposes. According to Rep. Paul: “This bill eliminates three of the major obstacles to the circulation of sound money: federal legal tender laws that force acceptance of Federal Reserve Notes; “counterfeiting” laws that serve no purpose other than to ban the creation of private commodity currencies; and tax laws that penalize the use of gold and silver coins as money.” For additional background on H.R. 1098, view Ron Paul’s 5-minute video explanation of the same bill in the last Congress, “Competing Currencies.”For this hearing Paul had two impressive expert witnesses: (1) Dr. Lawrence M. Parks, Ph.D. (pictured above left), Executive Director, Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education; and (2) Dr. Lawrence H. White, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, George Mason University. (You can view a one-hour video of this hearing online.) If you’d like to know in-depth about the arguments in favor of competing currencies, then you’re in for a treat. Click here to read Dr. Parks’ full written testimony consisting of a 63-page PDF with 58 graphics. He was only able to scratch the surface of his written testimony during the one hour hearing. In contrast, Dr. White only submitted a three-page PDF statement with no graphics. Nonetheless, both witnesses provided interesting and compelling testimony during the hearing, so the one hour video is well worth viewing. To give you an idea of just how urgently we need Congress to pass this competing currencies bill, Dr. Parks said our monetary situation is so bad that the dollar could even collapse during the hearing. Contact your Representative and Senators and urge them to study, cosponsor, and pass H.R. 1098 to help restore sound money by enabling Americans to use competing currencies. Without competing currencies the collapse of the Federal Reserve’s fiat currency is not a matter of if, but rather when. (This article originally appeared at JBS.org on September 15, 2011, and is reposted here with permission.) ————————————————————————————