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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19120

The Financial Oligarchy Reigns: Democracy’s Death Spiral From Greece to the United States

As the Economic Elite continue their plunder, the people in Greece riot and the big banks score yet another big blow against the people of the United States.

I: Democracy Vs. Oligarchy: Lessons from HistoryII: The Second Civil War: Financial Reform 2010III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10IV: Economic Imperialism and BlowbackV: Propagandized in AmericaVI: Save Yourself and Take Action

Democracy throughout the world is under attack. Many people can make the argument that our democracy here in America is only an illusion, but even the illusion of democracy is crashing down. Tragedies are currently playing out across the world on an epic scale. Unprecedented economic and environmental catastrophes have become the norm. Billions of people, the overwhelming majority of humanity, have been sentenced to a slow death due to a concentration of wealth and resources within humanity’s economic top 0.5%. Ultimately, short-sighted greed has proven to be humanity’s most severe disease.

I: Democracy Vs. Oligarchy: Lessons from History

The experiment known as democracy is devolving into fascism before our eyes; the “ iron law of oligarchy” is once again asserting itself. From the Founding Fathers on, we have known that you cannot have a concentration of vast wealth and Democracy at the same time - and we currently have the greatest concentration of wealth in the history of the United States. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

The power struggle between democracy and the concentration of power represented within private banking interests has been a war raging throughout American history. Our Founders and early Presidents were very explicit in their opposition and our need to vigilantly guard against any private interests who sought control over our economy. In fact, our current crisis and power structure were summed up with stunning accuracy by the Founding Fathers themselves. What James Madison called, “the daring depravity of the times.” As he described, “The stock-jobbers will become the praetorian band of the government, at once its tools and its tyrants, bribed by its largesse, and overawing it by clamors and combinations. Substituting the motive of private interest in place of public duty, leading to a real domination of the few under an apparent domination of the many.”

Leave it to Madison, the Father of the Constitution, to give us one of the most prescient quotes on modern-day America you can find. For those of you who have never heard the term “stock-jobbers,” here’s the definition from a dictionary written in 1811:
“Stock Jobbers

Persons who gamble in Exchange Alley, by pretending to buy and sell the public funds, but in reality only betting that they will be at a certain price, at a particular time; possessing neither the stock pretended to be sold, nor money sufficient to make good the payments for which they contract: these gentlemen are known under the different appellations of bulls, bears, and lame ducks.”
Yes, even the Founders, long before High Frequency Trading algorithms and derivatives, had a clear understanding and great fear of the casino rigging tyrants in “Exchange Alley.” Madison also famously said: “History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.”

Thomas Jefferson was prophetic in his statements as well: “Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.” Jefferson added, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a monied aristocracy that has set the government at defiance.”

If that wasn’t clear enough, Jefferson reiterated his conviction: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [them] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

One wonders what Jefferson would have to say about our current foreclosure crisis and stock market driven housing crash.

The Founders clearly knew that a concentration of wealth and a centralized banking system were the biggest threats to freedom and democracy. That is why the Founders adamantly opposed a central bank and a paper money system. Several Founders even suggested death as the punishment for any banking interest that wanted to create a centralized paper money system. They agreed that it was inevitably the surest road to tyranny.

Moving forward to our seventh President, Andrew Jackson also hit the nail on the head when he warned, “Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations.”

When President Jackson was asked what his greatest accomplishment was during his presidency, he gave a simple and direct four-word answer: “I killed the Bank.”

Our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t as fortunate as Andrew Jackson. It can be argued that “the Bank” killed Lincoln. He took on the banking interests during the Civil War. The banks were charging the government usurious interest rates on the funds Lincoln needed to fight the war. So Lincoln heeded Thomas Jefferson’s advice and made the bold move of taking on the bankers by creating a new money system and issuing “green backs” as the new currency. Shortly before he was assassinated, he had this to say:
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light upon its crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the Bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe.”
Lincoln then prophetically added:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my Country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the Country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the People, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed.”
Many will argue that Lincoln was proved right and the Republic was destroyed some years later in 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law. In 1913, U.S. Congressman Charles Lindbergh famously argued: “The [Federal Reserve] Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth. When the President signs this Bill, the invisible government of the monetary power will be legalized. The greatest crime of the ages is perpetrated by this banking and currency bill…. From now on, depressions will bescientifically created.”

In fact, President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, looking back at his signing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, considered it the most tragic and biggest mistake of his presidency and said this:
“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial Nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the Nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world, no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”
And, of course, the Federal Reserve Act came as Wall Street’s backlash against Wilson’s two “ trust busting” predecessors, Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Howard Taft. In a situation much like our current crisis, Roosevelt brazenly took on JP Morgan and friends and declared: “Corporation cunning has developed faster than the law of nation or state. Corporations have found ways to steal long before we have found that they were susceptible to punishment for theft. But sooner or later, unless there is a season of readjustment, there will come a riotous, wicked, murderous day of atonement…. These fools on Wall Street think that they can go on forever! They can’t!”

Even the famed economist John Maynard Keynes, the Founding Father of our modern economy, summed it up for us this way: “The ideas of economists… are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.”

The evident lesson from history to take away from all this, is that it has been clearly understood that whoever controls the money supply and economy, controls the country. No matter what form or type of government you have, if the economy is run by a private interest, you live in a Fascist society. Or as President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.”

As the former populist Senator Huey Long once said, “When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of democracy.”

II: The Second Civil War: Financial Reform 2010

Most Americans aren’t even aware of the profound implications in the battle being fought on Capitol Hill right now. In the wake of our economic crisis, the financial reform bill has become a critical defining moment in American history. This brings us right into the throes of another pivotal war for the very soul of America, once again pitting concentrated power against American democracy.

After two years since our economic crisis began, people who spend time objectively researching our economic system know what needs to be done to protect the future and general economic security of the American people. There are clearly crucial common-sense measures that must be taken.

On the evening of May 6th, 2010, one of the most vital battles of this war came to the Senate floor, the amendment to break up the “too big to fail” banking interests. The amendment was voted down and the American people were dealt a severe blow, as our democracy was publicly exposed as a mere charade.

The primary reason why 99% of the American population is experiencing the beginning phase of their downward shift in living standards, and the reason the free market and our government have become a farce, as our Forefathers warned, is because large politically-dominate bankers have become so powerful that they are able to rig the market and economic system in their favor and eliminate competition.

To break it down statistically, when six inter-connected banks, all organized in the Federal Reserve system, control over 60% of GDP and have the power to issue currency, competition is impossible. The game is over. They wield so much power that society and government are effectively captured and dominated by this Oligarchy.

Just as the Founders had feared and warned against, these six banks, along with their centralized Federal Reserve system, have concentrated wealth and power and now work together to control the economy and money supply, and therefore control politicians through “legalized” bribery (campaign finance and lobbying). Or as James Madison put it, our politicians have been “bribed by its largesse,” and overcome “by clamors and combinations.”

As former Harvard University President Abbott Lowell made clear back in 1926, “Popular election, it is said, may work fairly well as long as those questions are not raised which cause the holders of wealth and industrial power to make full use of their opportunities. But if the rich people in any modern state thought it worth their while… there is so much skill to be bought, and the art of using skill for production of emotion and opinion has so advanced, that the whole condition of political contests would be changed for the future.”

Key point: “as long as those questions are not raised…”

Quite clearly, the most important questions are now not only being raised, they are being debated and voted upon on the floor of the U.S. Senate. So this hidden power, and their ownership of Government, has now come to the forefront and been exposed for all to see. Let’s look behind the curtain and reveal who the political puppets truly are. Here is a list of the 61 “Senators” who voted against the interests of the American people and in favor of the Financial Oligarchy. This vote has given us the clearest view of who our enemies really are:
Akaka (D-HI)Alexander (R-TN)Barrasso (R-WY)Baucus (D-MT)Bayh (D-IN)Bennet (D-CO)Bond (R-MO)Brown (R-MA)Brownback (R-KS)Burr (R-NC)Carper (D-DE)Chambliss (R-GA)Cochran (R-MS)Collins (R-ME)Conrad (D-ND)Corker (R-TN)Cornyn (R-TX)Crapo (R-ID)Dodd (D-CT)Enzi (R-WY)Feinstein (D-CA)Gillibrand (D-NY)Graham (R-SC)Grassley (R-IA)Gregg (R-NH)Hagan (D-NC)Hatch (R-UT)Hutchison (R-TX)Inhofe (R-OK)Inouye (D-HI)Isakson (R-GA)Johanns (R-NE)Johnson (D-SD)Kerry (D-MA)Klobuchar (D-MN)Kohl (D-WI)Kyl (R-AZ)Landrieu (D-LA)Lautenberg (D-NJ)LeMieux (R-FL)Lieberman (ID-CT)McCain (R-AZ)McCaskill (D-MO)McConnell (R-KY)Menendez (D-NJ)Murkowski (R-AK)Nelson (D-FL)Nelson (D-NE)Reed (D-RI)Risch (R-ID)Roberts (R-KS)Schumer (D-NY)Sessions (R-AL)Shaheen (D-NH)Snowe (R-ME)Tester (D-MT)Thune (R-SD)Udall (D-CO)Voinovich (R-OH)Warner (D-VA)Wicker (R-MS)
These are the 61 “Senators” who sold out the American people and voted their allegiance to the Economic Elite. These “Senators” not only voted against the American people, they voted against the fundamental structure of a democratic society and free market.

If the American people don’t wake up and realize what is at stake here, and urgently start to defend themselves and take action, as bad as the past two years have been, we are going to be in a much worse situation in the near future. The Wall Street Elite are not messing around. They are launching serious attacks upon an unsuspecting American public.

III: Financial Terrorism Operations: 9/29/08 & 5/6/10

In the aftermath of Goldman Sachs’ public flogging before the world in Congress, and while under investigation, on the very day that Congress was voting on the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment and cutting behind the scenes deals to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve, the stock market had its greatest sudden drop in history, plummeting 700 points in ten minutes - shades of September 29, 2008 all over again.

If you recall, back in September ‘08, as Congress was voting down the first bailout, the big banks made the market plunge a record 778 points in one day. Fear and panic then led Congress to pass the bailout. Trillions of our tax dollars, the money that we desperately need to keep our society functioning over the long run, then went out the window and into the pockets of the very people who caused the crash.

What happened on September 29, 2008 will go down in history as one of the greatest acts of terrorism ever.

9/29/08 proved that when you have so much power concentrated in the hands of a few, you can manipulate a computer algorithm and make the market and economy go whichever way you want it to go. So on 5/6/10, just as the power of the big banks was again threatened on the floor of the Senate and a deal on auditing the Federal Reserve was being negotiated, in came a sudden and unprecedented ten-minute 700 point market drop, a precision-guided High Frequency Trading (HFT) attack to show Congress who’s boss.

If you think the massive sudden drop happened because one lowly trader hit one wrong button, if you actually believe that the entire stock market can plunge because of one mistaken key stroke by a low-level trader, you are stunningly naïve. I hate to burst yourbubble, but this was a direct attack.

In a market where 70% of all trades are executed by computer algorithms via High Frequency Trading (HFT), Goldman Sachs has the power to make the market crash or rise at will. In fact, Goldman has a major Weapon of Mass Destruction in its Program Trading monopoly of the New York Stock Exchange, as Tyler Durden described on Zero Hedge:
“Goldman’s dominance of the NYSE’s Program Trading platform, where in addition to recent entrant GETCO, it has been to date an explicit monopolist of the so-called Supplementary Liquidity Provider program, a role which affords the company greater liquidity rebates for, well providing liquidity, and generating who knows what other possible front market-looking, flow-prop integration benefits. Yesterday [5/6/10], Goldman’s SLP function was non-existent. One wonders - was the Goldman SLP team in fact liquidity taking, or to put it bluntly, among the main reasons for the market collapse….

… here is the most recently disclosed NYSE program trading data….

What is notable here is that of the 1.4 billion in principal shares, or shares traded for the firm’s own account, Goldman was the top trader by a margin of over 100% compared to the second biggest program trader.

We have long claimed that Goldman is the de facto monopolist of the NYSE’s program trading platform. As such, it is certainly the case that Goldman was instrumental in either a) precipitating yesterday’s crash or b) not providing the critical liquidity which it is required to do, when the time came. There are no other options.”
For further investigation, I turned to Max Keiser, who has written and authored similar Program Trading and HFT computer algorithms. I asked him if he thought this was an attack. Here is what he had to say:
“May 6th was an unequivocal act of domestic financial terrorism in America. A day that will live in infamy.

To scare the lawmakers, themselves large owners of the very banks and stocks that they are supposed to be regulating, a financial Weapon of Mass Destruction was put to their head and they acquiesced.

As the inventor of the continuous double-auction, market-making technology (VST tech. US pat. no. 5950176) that is referenced 132 times by program trading and HFT patents since 1996, I can tell you that Goldman, JP Morgan and the gang simply pulled the ‘buys’ from their computer trading programs and manufactured a crash. And when the coast was clear, and it was clear the politicians were not going to vote for anything that would break up the ‘too big to fail’ banks, all the ’sells’ were pulled from the computers and the market roared back.

This is a Manchurian Candidate market where program trading bots start the ball rolling in whatever direction Wall St. wants the market to go - and then hundreds of thousands of day-traders watching Cramer on CNBC jump on the momentum bandwagon and commit the crime for the Wall St. financial terrorists, who then say, ‘It wasn’t us, it was ‘the market!’”
On Friday, the next day, after the “break up the too big to fail banks” amendment was soundly defeated by a 61 to 33 margin in Senate and a deal was struck to eliminate key provisions from the audit of the Federal Reserve bill, Goldman was meeting with the SEC to work out a settlement in their case against them. Once again, Goldman proves that crime pays. Welcome to the New Mafia World Order.

Other than the two major operations carried out on 9/29/08 and 5/6/10, we must also recall a smaller attack on January 21st and 22nd of 2010, when Obama had a press conference and came out in favor of the Volcker Rule, which would have limited these HFT and “proprietary trading” schemes. At that time, the market dropped 430 points. Soon after this attack, all follow-up talk on the Volcker Rule faded away and this reform has not been seriously addressed by Obama since then.

The bottom line: the United States has been taken over by a financial terrorism network. Let’s face it, we are all hostages of these financial terrorists and their puppet politicians would rather be in on the scam than defend our interests. If these terrorists don’t get their way at all times, they have the power to throw their tremendous weight around and turn millions of lives upside down in a matter of minutes and, as they have shown, they have no hesitation in executing that power, no matter how many millions of lives they destroy.

They set off this crisis with a wave of bombings in their initial Economic Shock and Awecampaign two years ago, resulting in massive devastation. Just to name a few of their greatest hits within the U.S.:
* 50 million Americans are now living in poverty, which is the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world;

* 30 million Americans are in need of work;

* Five million American families foreclosed upon, 15 million expected by 2014;

* 50% of US children will now use a food stamp during childhood;

* Soaring budget deficits in states across the country and a record high national debt, with austerity measures on the way;

* Record-breaking profits and bonuses for themselves.
Like other terrorists, they don’t use IEDs, they use CDOs. They don’t use precision laser-guided missiles, they use High Frequency Trading. They don’t have WMDs, they have derivatives. Let’s also not forget that they have toxic assets and dirty debt bombs just waiting to be deployed upon the American public once there is any true growth in the economy. Their nuclear arsenal includes hundreds of Trillions in secretive derivatives and hidden debt bombs, just ticking away, waiting to be set off… at their whim…

IV: Economic Imperialism and Blowback

These same Financial Oligarchs who have been terrorizing America have unleashed vicious attacks all over the world for years now. Ironically, the latest attack is being carried out on the country that was the birthplace of democracy. Greece is now on fire, people are rioting and storming parliament, the financial terrorists have dropped a debt bomb on Greece and harshausterity measures are being thrust upon the Greek people.

As UK Guardian reporter Poul Rasmussen described it, the Greek economy is being “water-boarded.” His reporting gives a glimpse into the Financial Oligarchy’s master plan:
“The austerity measures forced on to the Greeks are not only unfair, they set a bad precedent for the rest of Europe. The EU Conservative majority is trying to use these kinds of austerity measures to force through social cutbacks across Europe. This is but a cynical attempt to roll back fundamental social standards. It does not even make financial sense as it would force thousands into the grey economy – one of the structural causes of the crisis in the first place – or even worse, would force them into abject poverty.”
The big banks, through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), their ultimate imperialism organization, are now in the process of turning Greece into a debt slave nation, yet another of many countries to fall under the brutal grip of the IMF.

For those of you who haven’t been following world affairs since World War II, imperialism never disappeared from the world. It just evolved. You don’t have to enslave populations through brute force; you can now do it through policy, conquering nations through Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs). As President John Adams once said, “There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by sword. The other is by debt.”

So once again, Greece is leading the way for us, showing us what our future may hold. This time, however, the lesson isn’t democracy; it’s rebelling against neo-feudalisticeconomic terrorism.

This is the exact economic terrorism that has blown back to the United States in the bailout. Again, history teaches us a valuable lesson. Once empires have conquered the third and developing world, they then turn on their own population, in an orgy of greed and the quest for total unfettered world domination.

As the Greeks are demonstrating, democracy is not a spectator sport. It’s time for us to grow up as a nation and turn off the Disneyland illusion machine (TV) and stand up for ourselves.

V: Propagandized in America

Part of the reason we are in this mess, and the main reason why the American people don’t even know what is happening to them, is that the illusion machine (television) has removed the American population tragically far from reality. The gap between the news we see on TV, and what is actually happening in the world today, is the most severe it has ever been. We have been bred to be completely removed from reality. As famed American philosopher and psychologist John Dewey once said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”

The American people need to understand that creating, manipulating and controlling public opinion through mass media propaganda is a science. As social psychologist Kelton Rhoads wrote in his study, Universal Persuasion, Everyday Influence:
“Make no mistake. There are legions of influence agents operating in our society. They thrive — they exist at the pinnacles of power — by getting you to think things and to do things they want you to think and do… Most people are either unaware of these influences, or when they are, vastly overestimate the amount of freedom they have to make up their own minds. But the successful influence agent knows that if he can manage the situation and choose the correct technique, your response to his technique will be as reliable as the springing of a mousetrap.”
People with power have used this science to divide and conquer the United States. In 1923, Edward Bernays, the Godfather of propaganda wrote: “Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.” William Blum in Rogue State wrote: “Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.” Harold Lasswell in 1927 declared: “The new antidote to willfulness is propaganda. If the mass will be free of chains of iron, it must accept its chains of silver. If it will not love, honor, and obey, it must not expect to escape seduction.”

In an extensive study on propaganda, which is also one of the most insightful looks into our modern-day technological society, sociologist Jacques Ellul wrote:
“Governmental propaganda suggests that public opinion demand this or that decision; it provokes the will of a people, who spontaneously would say nothing. But, once evoked, formed, and crystallized on a point, that will becomes the peoples will; and whereas the government really acts on it’s own, it gives the impression of obeying public opinion – after first having built that public opinion. The point is to make the masses demand of the government what the government has already decided to do.”
Famed British philosopher Bertrand Russell summed up the importance of propaganda this way: “It is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.”

Speaking of the “holders of power,” for another historical lesson in how much effort powerful interests put into dominating mass media and controlling public opinion, consider Congressman Oscar Callaway’s report to Congress in 1917 on JP Morgan’s master plan, which has been in effect since 1915:
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, shipbuilding, and powder interest, and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press. They found it was only necessary to purchase the control of 25 of the greatest papers. An agreement was reached. The policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for by the month, an editor was furnished for each paper to properly supervise and edit information regarding the questions of preparedness, militarism, financial policies, and other things of national and international nature considered vital to the interests of the purchasers.”
Now consider why it is that so many of the most significant issues and problems facing American society are rarely, if ever, discussed on U.S. television…

I could go on for hours about how mass media propaganda is used to manipulate, confuse, distract and divide us. We, as a population, have been acting against our own interests and fighting amongst ourselves, while the Economic Elite, who control our society and media system, are left unquestioned and unchallenged, operating behind the scenes, beyond the spotlight, above the law, concentrating wealth and resources, at our expense, in unprecedented fashion.

For a painfully obvious example, on the day that the crucial “break up the banks” amendment went to the Senate floor, a deal to gut the vital bill to audit the Federal Reserve was struck; the market had a record-breaking drop; Greece was burning and oil was spewing all over the Gulf of Mexico. I couldn’t believe the amount of historically significant news that was occurring! It was Shakespeare on steroids! I turned on the TV news networks and the coverage primarily focused on two things. One: an old football player, albeit one of the greatest ever, allegedly raped and beat a 16 year old girl. Two: a male anti-gay activist “rented a boy prostitute.”

Tweet this: OMG! What a sign of the times!

Never mind an economic crisis that affects millions. Never mind one of the greatest environmental disasters of all time. Never mind the historic vote on a Senate amendment that will have a profound effect on our economic well-being and possibly break up the Financial Oligarchy that caused our crisis and holds our nation hostage. Never mind the behind-the-scenes dealings to gut the audit of the Federal Reserve that secretly dished out trillions of taxpayer dollars.

While Rome burns, the mainstream media distracts us and spins the economic devastation as business as usual, nothing to be worried about. Yeah, the BS unemployment rate went up, but it’s good news people! Good times ahead, so go invest in some stocks and go buy yourself something special at the mall.

Other than to create and control popular opinion and keep us politically passive, the mainstream media exists to keep people consuming and spending their hard-earned money. That is the bottom line.

Every time you turn on the TV, you have to realize that the entire mass media system is an elaborate psychological operation to keep you passive and make you feel secure in spending your money. That’s why TV pundits and talking heads are paid huge salaries; they are experts in duping us and playing us for fools. We are all being played. We aren’t free citizens; we are indebted wage slaves. That may sound much too harsh for a population that has been propagandized for hours a day, every day of our lives, but it is the truth. As the brilliant John Dewey said, “We live exposed to the greatest flood of mass suggestion that any people has ever experienced.”

Who needs reality when you have American Idol, Disneyland and celebrity sex scandals?

Until we can block out these distractions and face reality, our future and living standards will continue to spiral downward.

VI: Save Yourself and Take Action

If you’re waiting on the Government to help you, you’re going to end up with the “short” end of the stick yet again. The Government is not on our side. In fact, just like Goldman Sachs, they are betting against us and “shorting us,” as the financial reform process is proving. Our government officials have been bought off and are on the side of the Oligarchs.

In life, things are rarely black and white; most situations usually have many gray areas. Unfortunately, this is not one of those situations. Either we all unite on common groundand STAND UP together as a mass non-violent movement now, or we descend further into a death spiral that will eventually lead to rioting and mass violence, as the 50 million Americans who are now desperately fighting for survival continue to be ignored, until they act out, just as they have done the world over. Suicide bombings, like the one that hit the IRS building in Texas, will occur more frequently. Next time, exploited and foreclosed-upon American citizens will not fail in their bombing attempts. The situation we are in now has many precedents in history and currently around the world. On a sociological level, we know what the future will hold for a society with such devastating inequalities and such a high number of desperate citizens living in dire straits.

As Guy DeBord summed it up: “The economy has now come to declare open war on humanity, attacking not only our possibilities for living, but our chances of survival…. When an all-powerful economy lost its reason - and that is precisely what defines these spectacular times.”

In conclusion, my main message is not one of despair. I know the game is rigged against us, but I also know that we ultimately have the power. We are 99% of the population. It’s just a matter of organizing together and exercising our will. It comes down to our ability to inform and inspire our family, friends and neighbors. It comes down to us overcoming our own passive unwillingness to STAND UP for our own rights, which is part of the reason we are in this crisis to begin with. We are at a point in American history where the stakes have never been higher. I wish we could just turn away and ignore it, but I know we can’t. Our very way of life is under attack. It is the very unfortunate reality of our current crisis.

Will we WAKE UP and acknowledge this, or will we continue to sleepwalk in ignorance to a slow death?

The Financial Oligarchy and their puppet politicians are betting that we will remain passive and accept a severe reduction in our standard of living. On a personal level, I’m going “all in” on the side of the American people. So from this point forward, I am dedicating myself to a mobilization to SAVE OUR ECONOMY AND DEMOCRACY from the Financial Oligarchy that has seized it.

I hope that those of you who are aware will do the same. You can get more information on the Mobilization for Our Economy here: http://ForOurEconomy.org/