BREAKING: House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep Mark Green tells us he has just learned all Democrats on the committee are pulling out from attending a field hearing about the border crisis in Texas on Wednesday. He says that’s despite several Dems confirming attendance, & inviting their own minority witness, who is confirmed on the federal panel. US Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz is also set to testify. Chairman Green says he was given no reason for the abrupt pullout. Chairman Green’s statement below. #FoxNews
Homeland Security committee Dems confirm that they will not be attending the border hearing
They say that they never agreed to attend in the first place so they are not “pulling out.”
It’s time America takes ACTION! SPEAK UP!
Call: Rep Mark Green’s office 202-224-3121 (Capitol switchboard)
Speak to the staff of ranking committee chair, this gets your message to him directly…. otherwise, our voices are diluted 🇺🇸
STATEMENT from Ranking Member Bennie Thompson (D):
“After careful consideration, Committee Democrats have decided not to participate in the Republicans’ field hearing this week. Unfortunately, it has become clear that Republicans planned to politicize this event from the start, breaking with the Committee’s proud history of bipartisanship. Instead of a fact-finding mission to develop better border security and immigration policies, Republicans are traveling to the border to attack the Administration and try to score political points with their extreme rhetoric – despite having voted against the resources border personnel need. Committee Democrats are in regular contact with Department leadership and stakeholders on the ground and will be taking substantive site visits to the border – including as soon as this week.”
The Biden Border plan is to shift illegal immigration from mass numbers of illegal aliens rushing the border to paroling or releasing those same illegal aliens into the United States with employment authorization and access to welfare, preparing the illegals for eventual de facto or legislative amnesty. The legislative amnesty is off the table with the Republican House, but the de facto amnesty remains in play.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
Imagine it! All this is allowed by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
The Luge press’s is only too happy to run cover for the lies. Just a few days ago the Lying Press, Associated Press in this case, touted that the numbers of border crossers is down significantly, as if the announcements of the parole amnesty convinced millions of illegal aliens enroute through Central America or flying into Mexico from Africa, Asia, and South America to just return home and try and use the app to enter, rather than try their luck at the border. Actually, luck has nothing to do with it; coyotes who work for the cartels have guaranteed entry to the United States, no matter how many attempts it takes.
A sharp drop in illegal border crossings since December could blunt a Republican point of attack against President Joe Biden as the Democratic leader moves to reshape a broken asylum system that has dogged him and his predecessors.
A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows some support for changing the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers allowed into the country. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the level of immigration and asylum-seekers should be lowered, while about 2 in 10 say they should be higher, according to the poll. About a third want the numbers to remain the same.
The decrease in border crossings followed Biden’s announcement in early January that Mexico would take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule that denies migrants the right to seek asylum as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the U.S. agreed to admit up to 30,000 a month of those four nationalities on humanitarian parole if they apply online, enter at an airport and find a financial sponsor.
Instead, the reality is that the Fiscal Year 2023 is heading tobreak the record of illegal immigration from the last two fiscal years, when over 5 million illegal aliens entered or attempted to enter the United States, with most being released into the United States.
Migrant encounters at the southern border have already surpassed the one million mark for Fiscal Year 2023, multiple Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources tell Fox News, marking an unprecedented pace for encounters.
As of Friday, the total migrant encounters at the border were at 1,008,217 for the fiscal year, which began in October. Of those, 87.8% were single adults. Just 328,454 were expelled under Title 42 — the pandemic-era protocol that allows border agents to rapidly expel border crossers.
There were more than 1.7 million encounters overall in FY 2021 and over 2.3 million in FY 2022. The first months of FY 2023 have outpaced those of the prior fiscal year. This time last year, numbers for FY22 through March 1 were 839,819—well under the 1 million mark.
Meanwhile, there have been 354,522 known “gotaways”—illegal immigrants who have evaded Border Patrol agents but have been detected on another form of surveillance. In FY 2022, there were nearly 600,000gotaways.
One may argue that the last few days have educated the illegal aliens and the numbers are dropping. But sadly for the Biden Regime and the Lying Press, reality has struck, and badly. Illegal aliens for whom the CBP One app is not available or not working have decided they are coming in, by hook or by crook, but mostly by violence. In fact, they are reverting to the common tactic that appeared during the early Clinton Regime, rushing the Ports-of-Entry (POE), the facilities where pedestrians and motor vehicles enter the United States from Mexico. Such tactics began in the 90s, but occasionally happened more recently as well under the Obama Regime and the Trump Administration.
Almost all of America’s leaders have gradually pulled back their COVID mandates, requirements, and closures—even in states like California, which had imposed the most stringent and longest-lasting restrictions on the public. At the same time, the media has been gradually acknowledging the ongoing release of studies that totally refute the purported reasons behind those restrictions. This overt reversal is falsely portrayed as “learned” or “new evidence.” Little acknowledgement of error is to be found. We have seen no public apology for promulgating false information, or for the vilification and delegitimization of policy experts and medical scientists like myself who spoke out correctly about data, standard knowledge about viral infections and pandemics, and fundamental biology.
The historical record is critical. We have seen a macabre Orwellian attempt to rewrite history and to blame the failure of widespread lockdowns on the lockdowns’ critics, alongside absurd denials of officials’ own incessant demands for them. In the Trump administration, Dr. Deborah Birxwas formally in charge of the medical side of the White House’s coronavirus task force during the pandemic’s first year. In that capacity, she authored all written federal policy recommendations to governors and states and personally advised each state’s public health officials during official visits, often with Vice President Mike Pence, who oversaw the entire task force. Upon the inauguration of President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci became chief medical advisor and ran the Biden pandemic response.
We must acknowledge the abject failure of the Birx-Fauci policies. They were enacted, but they failed to stop the dying, failed to stop the infection from spreading, and inflicted massive damage and destruction particularly on lower-income families and on America’s children.
More than 1 million American deaths have been attributed to that virus. Even after draconian measures, including school closures, stoppage of non-COVID medical care, business shutdowns, personal restrictions, and then the continuation of many restrictions and mandates in the presence of a vaccine, there was an undeniable failure—over two presidential administrations—to stop cases from rapidly escalating.
Numerous experts—including John Ioannidis, David Katz, and myself—called for targeted protection, a safer alternative to widespread lockdowns, in national media beginning in March of 2020. That proposal was rejected. History’s biggest public health policy failure came at the hands of those who recommended the lockdowns and those who implemented them, not those who advised otherwise.
WASHINGTON, DC – APRIL 09: White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx speaks as (L-R) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia listen during the daily coronavirus briefing in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 09, 2020 in Washington, DC. U.S. unemployment claims have approached 17 million over the past three weeks amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Alex Wong/Getty Images
The tragicfailure of reckless, unprecedented lockdowns that were contrary to established pandemic science, and the added massive harms of those policies on children, the elderly, and lower-income families, are indisputable and well-documented in numerousstudies. This was the biggest, the most tragic, and the most unethical breakdown of public health leadership in modern history.
In a democracy, indeed in any ethical and free society, the truth is essential. The American people need to hear the truth—the facts, free from the political distortions, misrepresentations, and censorship. The first step is to clearly state the harsh truth in the starkest possible terms. Lies were told. Those lies harmed the public. Those lies were directly contrary to the evidence, to decades of knowledge on viral pandemics, and to long-established fundamental biology.
Here are the 10 biggest falsehoods—known for years to be false, not recently learned or proven to be so—promoted by America’s public health leaders, elected and unelected officials, and now-discredited academics:
1. SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has a far higher fatality rate than the flu by several orders of magnitude.
2. Everyone is at significant risk to die from this virus.
3. No one has any immunological protection, because this virus is completely new.
4. Asymptomatic people are major drivers of the spread.
5. Locking down—closing schools and businesses, confining people to their homes, stopping non-COVID medical care, and eliminating travel—will stop or eliminate the virus.
6. Masks will protect everyone and stop the spread.
7. The virus is known to be naturally occurring, and claiming it originated in a lab is a conspiracy theory.
8. Teachers are at especially high risk.
9. COVID vaccines stop the spread of the infection.
10. Immune protection only comes from a vaccine.
None of us are so naïve as to expect a direct apology from critics at my employer, Stanford University, or in government, academic public health, and the media. But to ensure that this never happens again, government leaders, power-driven officials, and influential academics and advisors often harboring conflicts of interest must be held accountable. Personally, I remain highly skeptical that any government investigation or commission can avoid politicization. Regardless of their intention, all such government-run inquiries will at least be perceived as politically motivated and their conclusions will be rejected outright by many. Those investigations must proceed, though, if only to seek the truth, to teach our children that truth matters, and to remember G.K. Chesterton’s critical lesson that “Right is right, even if nobody does it. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it.”
Scott W. Atlas, MD is the Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in health policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Co-Director of the Global Liberty Institute, Founding Fellow of Hillsdale’s Academy for Science & Freedom, and author of A Plague Upon Our House: My Fight at the Trump White House to Stop COVID from Destroying America (Bombardier Press, 2022).
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
Judicial Watch: Records Show U.S. and UK ‘Confidentiality Agreement’ Tied to Vaccine Adverse Events
(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received 57 pages of heavily redacted records from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that show, just two days prior to FDA approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, a discussion between U.S. and UK health regulators regarding the COVID shot and “anaphylaxis,” with the regulators emphasizing their “mutual confidentiality agreement.”
Judicial Watch obtained the records through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against HHS (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:22-cv-00660)) after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is an agency of HHS, failed to respond to an August 30, 2021, FOIA request for:
All emails sent to and from members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee regarding adverse events, deaths and/or injuries caused by investigatory vaccines for the prevention or treatment of SARS-CoV-2 and/or COVID-19 currently produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and/or Johnson & Johnson.
The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is the U.S. Government’s central advisory body, along with Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), advising whether to approve COVID vaccines.
A lengthy, heavily redacted December 2020 email exchange shows U.S. and UK health officials placing a heavy emphasis on their “mutual confidentiality agreement” in a discussion regarding “anaphylactoid reactions” to the COVID vaccine.
The exchange is initiated by Jonathan Mogford, policy director of the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and is sent to Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock as well as Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). The subject line and body of the email are fully redacted under FOIA Exemption B3 (relating to statutory prohibitions).
As background, Mogford includes information on “two cases of anaphylactoid reactions in individuals with a strong past history of allergic reactions….” Marks replies to Mogford: “It would be very helpful if our Office of Vaccines could receive additional details [redacted] from MHRA [UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency] under the terms of our mutual confidentiality agreement.” Mogford later replies, “… attached are [redacted] hope that’s helpful in the meantime. If I can just remind – information shared under our confidentiality agreement.”
Marion Gruber, head of the Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR), then replies to Mogford, “Thank you so much for this information. Our emails crossed. If possible, would be available for a t-con [teleconference] today?” The exchange concludes with OVRR Deputy Director Phil Krause advising UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency official Jamie Convisser, “Your summary is correct. I’m cc:ing Amanda Cohn at CDC who can provide the most up-to-date details about [redacted]. Obviously, [redacted], not all of this is public so please hold these details confidential.” Cohn then replies to Mogford, and includes an attachment titled “Anaphylaxis CLARK Dec 19 2020 Final”. She writes, “I am adding my colleagues Tom Clark and Stacey Martin, we are happy to share more information with you. Attached are slides that were presented at a public meeting on Saturday. [Redacted].”
The FDA issued its Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine for individuals 16 years of age and older on December 11, 2020.
On May 14, 2021, the CDC’s Dr. Amanda Cohn emailed Office of Vaccines Research and Review Director Marion Gruber and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director Peter Marks with the subject line “Coadministration of COVID-19 Vaccines with Other Vaccines During Pregnancy.”
Gruber writes, “I am fine with this language.” Marks then responds to Cohn and her CDC colleague, Sarah Mbaeyi, “I can live with this too. Please let me know if you want to connect about the adverse event issue later today. Seems like work is still ongoing, but let me know. Thanks.” Cohn replies, “We have a meeting with Rochelle [presumably CDC Director Rochelle Walensky] at 3:30 about if we should say anything or wait until we have more definitive information. I will let you know where we land. I’m not sure there is a right answer.”
“It again took a lawsuit for the Biden administration to hand over, albeit heavily redacted, information regarding the safety of the COVID vaccines that the public has every right to know,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “This disturbing batch of new documents have uncovered a secret confidentiality agreement tied to COVID vaccine safety issues and emails that raise new questions about the vaccines and pregnancy.”
Judicial Watch is pursuing challenges against the agency’s redactions under FOIA.
In a previous production from this FOIA lawsuit, Judicial Watch received 1,081 pages of records from HHS detailing internal discussions about myocarditis and the COVID vaccine. Other documents detailed adverse “events for which a contributory effect of the vaccine could not be excluded.”
Through FOIA, Judicial Watch has uncovered a substantial amount of information about COVID-19 issues:
HHS records regarding data Moderna submitted to the FDA on its mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, indicated a “statistically significant” number of rats were born with skeletal deformations after their mothers were injected with the vaccine. The documents also reveal Moderna elected not to conduct a number of standard pharmacological studies on the laboratory test animals.
FDA records detailed pressure for COVID-19 vaccine booster approval and use.
NIH records revealed an FBI “inquiry” into the NIH’s controversial bat coronavirus grant tied to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The records also show National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) officials were concerned about “gain-of-function” research in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2016. The Fauci agency was also concerned about EcoHealth Alliance’s lack of compliance with reporting rules and use of gain-of-function research in the NIH-funded research involving bat coronaviruses in Wuhan, China.
HHS records revealed that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.
NIAID records showed that it gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself. The records also included an email from the vice director of the Wuhan Lab asking an NIH official for help finding disinfectants for decontamination of airtight suits and indoor surfaces.
HHS records included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci ” email chain, citing ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”
HHS records included a grant application for research involving the coronavirus that appears to describe “gain-of-function” research involving RNA extractions from bats, experiments on viruses, attempts to develop a chimeric virus and efforts to genetically manipulate the full-length bat SARSr-CoV WIV1 strain molecular clone.
HHS records showed the State Department and NIAID knew immediately in January 2020 that China was withholding COVID data, which was hindering risk assessment and response by public health officials.
University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) records showed the former director of the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), Dr. James W. Le Duc warned Chinese researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology of potential investigations into the COVID issue by Congress.
HHS records regarding biodistribution studies and related data for the COVID-19 vaccines showed a key component of the vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech, lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), were found outside the injection site, mainly the liver, adrenal glands, spleen and ovaries of test animals, eight to 48 hours after injection.
Records from the Federal Select Agent Program (FSAP) revealed safety lapses and violations at U.S. biosafety laboratories that conduct research on dangerous agents and toxins.
HHS records included emails between National Institutes of Health (NIH) then-Director Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), about hydroxychloroquine and COVID-19.
HHS records showed that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020.
Fauci emails included his approval of a press release supportive of China’s response to the 2019 novel coronavirus.
— Read on www.judicialwatch.org/us-and-uk-agreement/
Sec. 4 . Policy and Actions Related to United States Central Bank Digital Currencies. (a) The policy of my Administration on a United States CBDC is as follows:
(i) Sovereign money is at the core of a well-functioning financial system, macroeconomic stabilization policies, and economic growth. My Administration places the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC. These efforts should include assessments of possible benefits and risks for consumers, investors, and businesses; financial stability and systemic risk; payment systems; national security; the ability to exercise human rights; financial inclusion and equity; and the actions required to launch a United States CBDC if doing so is deemed to be in the national interest.
(ii) My Administration sees merit in showcasing United States leadership and participation in international fora related to CBDCs and in multi-country conversations and pilot projects involving CBDCs. Any future dollar payment system should be designed in a way that is consistent with United States priorities (as outlined in section 4(a)(i) of this order) and democratic values, including privacy protections, and that ensures the global financial system has appropriate transparency, connectivity, and platform and architecture interoperability or transferability, as appropriate.
(iii) A United States CBDC may have the potential to support efficient and low-cost transactions, particularly for cross-border funds transfers and payments, and to foster greater access to the financial system, with fewer of the risks posed by private sector-administered digital assets. A United States CBDC that is interoperable with CBDCs issued by other monetary authorities could facilitate faster and lower-cost cross-border payments and potentially boost economic growth, support the continued centrality of the United States within the international financial system, and help to protect the unique role that the dollar plays in global finance. There are also, however, potential risks and downsides to consider. We should prioritize timely assessments of potential benefits and risks under various designs to ensure that the United States remains a leader in the international financial system.
(b) Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Director of National Intelligence, and the heads of other relevant agencies, shall submit to the President a report on the future of money and payment systems, including the conditions that drive broad adoption of digital assets; the extent to which technological innovation may influence these outcomes; and the implications for the United States financial system, the modernization of and changes to payment systems, economic growth, financial inclusion, and national security. This report shall be coordinated through the interagency process described in section 3 of this order. Based on the potential United States CBDC design options, this report shall include an analysis of:
(i) the potential implications of a United States CBDC, based on the possible design choices, for national interests, including implications for economic growth and stability;
(ii) the potential implications a United States CBDC might have on financial inclusion;
(iii) the potential relationship between a CBDC and private sector-administered digital assets;
(iv) the future of sovereign and privately produced money globally and implications for our financial system and democracy;
(v) the extent to which foreign CBDCs could displace existing currencies and alter the payment system in ways that could undermine United States financial centrality;
(vi) the potential implications for national security and financial crime, including an analysis of illicit financing risks, sanctions risks, other law enforcement and national security interests, and implications for human rights; and
(vii) an assessment of the effects that the growth of foreign CBDCs may have on United States interests generally.
(c) The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Chairman of the Federal Reserve) is encouraged to continue to research and report on the extent to which CBDCs could improve the efficiency and reduce the costs of existing and future payments systems, to continue to assess the optimal form of a United States CBDC, and to develop a strategic plan for Federal Reserve and broader United States Government action, as appropriate, that evaluates the necessary steps and requirements for the potential implementation and launch of a United States CBDC. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve is also encouraged to evaluate the extent to which a United States CBDC, based on the potential design options, could enhance or impede the ability of monetary policy to function effectively as a critical macroeconomic stabilization tool.
(d) The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, shall:
(i) within 180 days of the date of this order, provide to the President through the APNSA and APEP an assessment of whether legislative changes would be necessary to issue a United States CBDC, should it be deemed appropriate and in the national interest; and
(ii) within 210 days of the date of this order, provide to the President through the APNSA and the APEP a corresponding legislative proposal, based on consideration of the report submitted by the Secretary of the Treasury under section 4(b) of this order and any materials developed by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve consistent with section 4(c) of this order.
The language in Section 4 makes Order 14067…
…the most treacherous act by a sitting President in the history of our republic.
Because Section 4 sets the stage for…
Legal government surveillance of all US citizens…
Total control over your bank accounts and purchases…
And the ability to silence all dissenting voices for good.
In this new war on freedom, the Dems aren’t coming for your guns.
No, they’re thinking much bigger than that…
They’re coming for your money.
And it’s already started.
Former Advisor to Pentagon and CIA: “Your life savings and freedoms are at immediate risk.“
Jim Richards, a former advisor to the Pentagon, the White House, Congress, the CIA, and the Department of Defense and an attorney, investment banker……and author of 7 books on currencies and international economics has stated the following…
When places like Fox, CNBC or Bloomberg want to know what’s about to shakeup the global economy, they call me.
Most of all, like you, I’m a proud American patriot.
The disturbing predictions you’re about to see are based on my independent research and my contacts in the intelligence community.
Someone needs to pull the alarm!
Section 4 of Biden’s Order means for all Americans…it is laying the groundwork for…
The US dollar being made obsolete.
It Can Happen Here: The Confiscation Scheme Planned for US and UK Depositors
Confiscating the customer deposits in Cyprus banks, it seems, was not a one-off, desperate idea of a few eurozone troika officials scrambling to salvage their balance sheets. A joint paper by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Bank of England dated December 10, 2012, shows that these plans have been long in the making; that they originated with the G20 Financial Stability Board in Basel, Switzerland (discussed earlier here); and that the result will be to deliver clear title to the banks of depositor funds. New Zealand has a similar directive, discussed earlier here.
Few depositors realize that legally, the bank owns the depositor’s funds as soon as they are put in the bank. Our money becomes the bank’s, and we become unsecured creditors holding IOUs. (See here and here.) But until now, the bank has been obligated to pay the money back as cash on demand. Under the FDIC-BOE plan, our IOUs will be converted into “bank equity.” The bank will get the money and we will get stock in the bank. With any luck we may be able to sell the stock to someone else, but when and at what price? Most people keep a deposit account so they can have ready cash to pay the bills.
Reading the Fine Print
The 15-page FDIC-BOE document is called “Resolving Globally Active, Systemically Important, Financial Institutions.” It begins by explaining that since the 2008 banking crisis, it has become clear that some other way besides taxpayer bailouts are needed to maintain “financial stability.” Evidently anticipating that the next financial collapse will be on a grander scale than either the taxpayers or Congress is willing to underwrite, the authors present this alternative:
An efficient path for returning the sound operations of the G-SIFI to the private sector would be provided by exchanging or converting a sufficient amount of the unsecured debt from the original creditors of the failed company [meaning the depositors] into equity [or stock]. In the U.S., the new equity would become capital in one or more newly formed operating entities. In the U.K., the same approach could be used, or the equity could be used to recapitalize the failing financial company itself–thus, the highest layer of surviving bailed-in creditors would become the owners of the resolved firm. In either country, the new equity holders would take on the corresponding risk of being shareholders in a financial institution. [Emphasis added.]
No exception is indicated for “insured deposits” in the U.S., meaning those under $250,000, the deposits we thought were protected by FDIC insurance. This can hardly be an oversight, since it is the FDIC that is issuing the directive. The FDIC is an insurance company funded by premiums paid by private banks. The directive is called a “resolution process,” defined elsewhere as a plan that “would be triggered in the event of the failure of an insurer and would facilitate [the failed bank’s] resolution in a controlled manner, avoiding systemic disruption and use of public funds.” The only mention of “insured deposits”is in connection with existing UK legislation, which the FDIC-BOE directive goes on to say is inadequate, implying that it needs to be modified or overridden.
An Imminent Risk
If our IOUs are converted to bank stock, they will no longer be subject to insurance protection but will be “at risk” and vulnerable to being wiped out, just as the Lehman Brothers shareholders were in 2008. That this dire scenario could actually materialize was underscored by Yves Smith in a March 19 post titled When You Weren’t Looking, Democrat Bank Stooges Launch Bills to Permit Bailouts, Deregulate Derivatives. She writes:
In the U.S., depositors have actually been put in a worse position than Cyprus deposit-holders, at least if they are at the big banks that play in the derivatives casino. The regulators have turned a blind eye as banks use their depositaries to fund derivatives exposures. And as bad as that is, the depositors, unlike their Cypriot confreres, aren’t even senior creditors. Remember Lehman? When the investment bank failed, unsecured creditors (and remember, depositors are unsecured creditors) got eight cents on the dollar. One big reason was that derivatives counterparties require collateral for any exposures, meaning they are secured creditors. The 2005 bankruptcy reforms made derivatives counterparties senior to unsecured lenders. [Emphasis added.]
One might wonder why the posting of collateral by a derivative counterparty, at some percentage of full exposure, makes the creditor “secured,” while the depositor who posted collateral at 100 cents on the dollar is “unsecured.” But moving on — Smith writes:
Lehman had only two itty bitty banking subsidiaries, and to my knowledge, was not gathering retail deposits. But as readers may recall, Bank of America moved most of its derivatives from its Merrill Lynch operation [to] its depositary in late 2011.
Its “depositary” is the arm of the bank that takes deposits. At B of A, that means lots and lots of deposits. The deposits are now subject to being wiped out by a major derivatives loss. How bad could that be? Smith quotes Bloomberg:
… Bank of America’s holding company… held almost $75 trillion of derivatives at the end of June…
That compares with JPMorgan’s deposit-taking entity, JPMorgan Chase Bank NA, which contained 99 percent of the New York-based firm’s $79 trillion of notional derivatives, the OCC data show.
$75 trillion and $79 trillion in derivatives! These two mega-banks alone hold more in derivatives eachthan the entire global GDP (at $70 trillion).
Smith goes on:
… Remember the effect of the 2005 bankruptcy law revisions: derivatives counterparties are first in line, they get to grab assets first and leave everyone else to scramble for crumbs… Lehman failed over a weekend after JP Morgan grabbed collateral.
But it’s even worse than that. During the Savings & Loan crisis, the FDIC did not have enough in deposit insurance receipts to pay for the Resolution Trust Corporation wind-down vehicle. It had to get more funding from Congress. This move paves the way for another TARP-style shakedown of taxpayers, this time to save depositors.
Perhaps, but Congress has already been burned and is liable to balk a second time. Hence the need for the FDIC-BOE resolution. When it is implemented, the FDIC will no longer need to protect depositor funds; it can just confiscate them.
Note that an FDIC confiscation of deposits to recapitalize the banks is far different from a simple tax on taxpayers to pay government expenses. The government’s debt is at least arguably the people’s debt, since the government is there to provide services for the people. But when the banks get into trouble with their derivative schemes, they are not serving depositors, who are not getting a cut of the profits; and by no stretch of the imagination are the depositors liable for the losses. Taking depositor funds is simply theft. What should be done is to raise FDIC insurance premiums and make the banks pay to keep their depositors whole, but premiums are already high. The FDIC is a government agency, but like other regulatory agencies it is subject to regulatory capture. Deposit insurance has failed, and so has the private banking system that has depended on it for the trust that makes banking work.
Note too that imposing losses on depositors is not a “wealth tax” but is a tax on the poor, since wealthy people don’t keep most of their money in bank accounts. They keep it in the stock market, in real estate, in over-the-counter derivatives, in gold and silver, and so forth.
Are you safe, then, if your money is in gold and silver? Apparently not — if it’s stored in a safety deposit box in the bank. Homeland Security has reportedly told banks that it has authority to seize the contents of safety deposit boxes without a warrant when it’s a matter of “national security,” which a major bank crisis no doubt will be.
The Swedish Alternative: Nationalize the Banks
Another alternative was considered by President Obama in 2009 but was rejected: nationalize failed banks. In a February 2009 article titled “Are Uninsured Bank Depositors in Danger?,” Felix Salmon discussed a newsletter by Asia-based investment strategist Christopher Wood, in which Wood wrote:
It is… amazing that Obama does not understand the political appeal of the nationalization option… [D]espite this latest setback nationalization of the banks is coming sooner or later because the realities of the situation will demand it. The result will be shareholders wiped out and bondholders forced to take debt-for-equity swaps, if not hopefully depositors.
On whether depositors could be forced to become equity holders, Salmon commented:
It’s worth remembering that depositors are unsecured creditors of any bank; usually, indeed, they’re by far the largest class of unsecured creditors.
President Obama acknowledged that bank nationalization had worked in Sweden, and that the course pursued by the U.S. Fed had not worked in Japan, which wound up instead in a “lost decade.” But Obama opted for the Japanese approach because, according to Ed Harrison, “Americans will not tolerate nationalization.”
That was four years ago. When Americans realize that the alternative is to have their ready cash transformed into “bank stock” of questionable marketability, moving failed mega-banks into the public sector may start to have more appeal.
Soon, your cash will be confiscated – or will simply be worthless paper.
To make this happen, banks will be closing branches under the pretense its workers are quitting over fear of transmission of the COVID-19 coronavirus from bank customer to bank teller. Intentional central bank induced inflation will crush the purchasing power of the American dollar. Then there will be pre-planned shortages of cash and coin that will force the public to beg for currency reform – the elimination of paper money and its replacement with a digital money card, what the World Economic Forum calls THE 4TH DIGITAL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
Every “digital dollar” will be programmed by the government…that means they will be able to “turn on or off” your money at will.
Not only that, but they’ll be able to TRACK and RECORD every purchase you make.
The digital dollar means Dems would be able to punish any contribution, purchase, or even social media comment they don’t like.
And this isn’t something years away… It’s starting now.
Biden’s secret army has been hard at work, and…US trials are already well underway.
In fact, our government is racing to catch up…
Quote: “We think it’s really important that the central bank maintain a stable currency and payments system for the public’s benefit. That’s one of our jobs,” Powell said. He noted the “transformational innovation” in the area of digital payments and said the Fed is continuing to do work on the matter, including its own FedNow system expected to go online in 2023.”
Soros’ Open Society… He’s a problem! Because of his continual funding and backing the far left progressive agenda and push for the NWO, he is dictating where American tax dollars are going! Why us this even allowed? And the Biden administration just thinks it is perfectly acceptable to give his his Open Society Foundations 12 MILLION DOLLARS OF AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS TO the SOLIDARITY CENTER, the country’s largest union conglomerate, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
The Biden administration is giving a nonprofit partially funded by leftwing billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations (OSF)$12 millionto strengthen labor rights and empower workers in three Latin American countries. The U.S. taxpayer dollars will go to theSolidarity Center, a Washington D.C.-based group closely allied with OSF as well as the country’s largest union conglomerate, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). The Solidarity Center’s mission is to help workers across the globe fight discrimination, exploitation and systems that entrench poverty. It claims to accomplish this by empowering workers to raise their voice for dignity on the job, justice in their communities and greater equality in the global economy.
The group will use the $12 million to “strengthen democratic, independent workers’ organizations in Brazil, Colombia and Peru,” according to the Department of Labor (DOL) announcement issued this week. The project will bolster unions and advocate for the full and free exercise of collective bargaining rights and freedom of association, the agency writes, adding that the focus will be on underserved communities and advancing gender and racial equity. Specifically, the American taxpayer dollars will support activities that improve respect for the rights of Brazil’s Afro-Brazilian, migrant, women and LGBTQI+ workers in the digital platform economy and the manufacturing sector. In Colombia, the focus will be on increasing the capacity of women, migrants, and indigenous people to organize and advocate for workers’ rights. In Peru, the goal is to improve access to mechanisms for labor rights compliance in the mining and agriculture sectors, particularly for indigenous and migrant workers.
The Solidarity Center, which claims to be the largest U.S.-based international worker rights organization, also operates in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Most of its funding comes from Uncle Sam, but private groups like OSF also contribute generously. In 2020, the Solidarity Center received nearly $39 million in federal awards, according to its latestannual report. In 2019, the center got over $36 million from the U.S. government. Additionally, the group gets millions annually in “other revenues” that are not broken down. However,recordsobtained by Judicial Watch show that the OSF has given a lot of money to the Solidarity Center in the last few years. In 2020, the latest available reporting period, OSF gave the Solidarity Center $980,000. In 2019 the center received $785,000 from OSF and in 2018 it got $400,000 from the Soros nonprofit that has dedicated billions of dollars to leftist causes around the world. Soros’s global foundation explains that the grants are for economic equity and justice, access to justice for migrant workers in the U.S., to improve labor rights in Mexico and Central America, and the empowerment of vulnerable workers in the domestic and agricultural sectors in the Middle East.
The U.S. government has long funded Soros groups as well as those with close ties to them like the Solidarity Center. Judicial Watch has reported on it for years and obtained records that show the disturbing reality of American taxpayers financing Soros’s leftwing plots abroad. This includes uncoveringdocumentsshowing State Department funding of Soros nonprofits in Albania to attack traditional, pro-American groups and policies; U.S. government funding of Soros’sradical globalist agendain Guatemala , Colombia, Romania and Macedonia. The cash usually flows through the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Details of the financial and staffing nexus between OSF and the U.S. government are available in a Judicial Watchinvestigative report. Domestically Soros groups have pushed a radical agenda that includes promoting an open border with Mexico, fomenting racial disharmony by funding anti-capitalist black separationist organizations, financing the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups involved in the Ferguson Missouri riots, weakening the integrity of the nation’s electoral systems, opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and eroding 2nd Amendment protections.
The White House pressured the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Texas, to not declare a state of emergency over the city’s migrant crisis due to fear it would make President Biden look bad, The Post has learned.
At least three of the El Paso City Council’s eight members have urged Mayor Oscar Leeser to issue an emergency declaration in response to the thousands of migrants who’ve filled the city’s shelters and are being housed in local hotels, sources familiar with the matter said.
But Leeser admitted during a private phone conversation last month that he’d been directed otherwise by the Biden administration, one of the officials told The Post.
“He told me the White House asked him not to,” Council member Claudia Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez also said Leeser has repeatedly assured her that he’d declare a state of emergency “if things got worse” — without saying what that meant.
US Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), whose district covers rural areas and border towns near El Paso, also said he heard similar accounts from other city officials.
“It is a sleight of hand what the administration is doing — pressuring the local government to not issue a declaration of emergency, to say as if everything is going OK,” he said.
Gonzales also alleged that the White House has done “the same thing in other parts of my district,” which have also seen huge numbers of migrants seeking refuge.
Leeser declined to speak with The Post but said in a prepared statement, “I don’t bow to pressure from any side.”
At one point over 2,100 migrants were crossing the border at El Paso daily.
New York Post
“I make decisions based on current circumstances and in the best interest of the citizens of El Paso,” the statement said.
Leeser also praised the federal government for providing his city with “critical” assistance.
The White House pressured El Paso’s mayor to not declare a State of Emergency over the city’s migrant crisis. New York PostCongressman Tony Gonzales shares it was not the first time they’ve received pressure regarding migrants seeking refuge. Congressman Tony Gonzalez
At a Sept. 27 City Council meeting, Mayor Leeser also addressed the issue, saying Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) had urged him not to declare a State of Emergency, adding: “The White House has asked, at this point, for us not to do that and they’ll continue to work with us and continue to give us … money through [the] Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
Figures posted on El Paso’s official website show the city has received only $2 million in federal reimbursements toward the $8 million it has spent dealing with the migrant crisis.
The total cost could end up being much more, with ElPasomatters.org reporting in September the city was spending as much as $300,000 a day to shelter, feed and transport asylum-seeking immigrants.
In May, The Post first reported how officials in El Paso were considering declaring a state of emergency ahead of the expected ending of pandemic-related expulsions of border-crossers under Title 42 of the federal Public Health Services Act.
The move would have made the city and county eligible for state and federal funding to open additional shelters for housing migrants.
But the following day, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego said that “the mayor and I backed off,” telling The Post that “we found out that there’s very little difference between the funding we’re getting now and the funding that we would get if it went up to the governor and the governor sent it to President Biden.”
At the time, about 700 migrants a day were arriving in El Paso.
But that number topped 2,100 a day last week before dropping down to around 1,600 a day, according to the latest information posted Monday on the city’s website.
Between April and mid-September more than 62,000 migrants had crossed the border at El Paso alone.
El Paso has relocated more than 10,000 migrants by bus to New York City since August, with Lesser revealing at a public meeting last month that he got a green light to do so from Mayor Eric Adams.
The front cover of the New York Post for Oct. 18, 2022.
Adams has denied that assertion and publicly called on Leeser to end the program earlier this month, saying “New York cannot accommodate the number of buses that we have coming here to our city.”
The Oct. 7 appeal came the same day Hizzoner declared a state of emergency in the Big Apple over its migrant crisis.
But the buses have continued rolling to the city from El Paso, most recently on Sunday.
Leeser has said that most of the migrants flooding El Paso come from Venezuela.
In recent days, migrants have been able to simply walk across the dried-up Rio Grande, surrender to US Customs and Border Protection officials and get released after saying they intend to seek political asylum.
Last week, the US and Mexican governments announced a deal under which Venezuelans who cross into the US would be sent back to Mexico.
But border sources told The Post that the agreement was only being enforced in a small number of cases.
The White House didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The Trailblazing Patriot 