“Because the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal.” ~ Peggy Noonan
By Catherine Austin Fitts
THE FINANCIAL COUP D’ ETAT & MONICA LEWINSKY
I was in Washington in the fall of 1997 when money started disappearing from the US government. It was just the beginning. I called it the “Missing Money” and I counted it for years.
When the money started flowing out of federal accounts in October 1997, the beginning of federal fiscal 1998, very few people noticed. Instead Monica Lewinsky and the impeachment captured the attention and imagination of both Washington and the Nation. The media shriek-o-meter was dialed as high as it could.
The tactic worked. No one paid attention to the financial coup d’etat except for the firms laundering the money. There was a blip on September 10, 2001, when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admitted that DOD was missing $2.3 trillion for the year before. Recognition of this loss was, of course, erased by the events of 9/11, the very next day.
The response was to increase appropriations to the Department of Defense rather than to enforce the Constitutional provisions that spending must be envisioned by Congressional appropriations or the Legislative provisions that require regular published audited financial statements.
Our retirement savings were moved out of the system by stealth, financed by growing debt, much of it issued fraudulently.
CUT & RUN & MONICA LEWINSKY II
The latest announcement of the Department of Defense Inspector General indicates that 2015 was no ordinary year at DOD. The IG announced $6.5 trillion of undocumentable adjustments at yearend in the DOD accounts for fiscal 2015. Turns out there were also $2.8 trillion undocumentable adjustments made during the year. So the total for money missing from the US government has now topped $21 trillion. Add the bailouts, and our losses approach $50 trillion.
I was sitting at my desk several weeks ago when I had a sudden feeling of déjà vu – somehow I had been here before. But where was “here?” I sensed my being distracted from a financial scam of extraordinary proportion a second time. My inbox was being overwhelmed by disinformation relating to the presidential election (Clinton is a hologram, Clinton is dead, Clinton has doubles, Clinton is at death’s door).
This was happening as insiders were engaged in a further financial “cut and run.” To name a few instances of money disappearing and liabilities being pruned, please consider:
Lockheed Cuts and Runs (DOD missing $6.5 trillion)
Unanswered Questions re: Wells Fargo (Are phony mortgages feeding the Fed balance sheet)
Bayer agrees to buy Monsanto for $66 Billion (44% premium over May 9 stock price)
Hedge Funds pulls business from Deutsche Bank
Of greatest concern of all, a serious move is afoot to re-engineer the Constitution, having gotten 28 of the 36 states needed to approve:
Inside the Conservative Push for States to Amend the Constitution
Note how these “conservatives” have no interest in enforcing the Constitution; that is, no interest in finding where our missing trillions went and no interest in getting the money back. Their lack of interest should tell you everything you need to know.
Now that the assets have been stripped, an effort is underway by the people who have benefited to institute a balanced budget. In other words, the people plump with stolen wealth want now to abrogate obligations and contracts to the people they robbed, further harvesting those same people whose money has already been stolen. As Howling Mad Murdock said in “The A Team,” They’ll never suspect the old double framus.”
Will a constitutional convention shred the legal processes to get money and assets back? Will it free government contractors and bank depositories of responsibility and liabilities? Will it be possible to compromise property rights, institute gun control, mandate vaccines, mandate chipping, and to wipe out most if not all corporate liabilities? Will it be possible even to institute a form of friendly slavery enforced by financial dependency and digital technologies and currencies? You need to think long and hard about the door that will be opened when this happens.
If you want to understand how these state campaigns have been engineered while we are distracted by the media shriek-o-meters, check out a documentary called Hot Coffee about tort reform engineered at the state level. This effort to end democracy and human rights is long standing.
Your state and local elections are important. Please pay attention, particularly if you are in a state targeted for “balanced budget reform.”
While we are distracted by Monica Lewinsky II, the insiders are making off with our legal and financial assets and rights
MY VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
I anticipate publishing my vote for President in early November, immediately prior to the election.
I am posting my thinking as of today to invite comment from our subscribers. It is part of the conversation about what is going on in America and what we do about it.
Until Monday night, I was planning on voting for Gary Johnson. Now I anticipate that I will vote for Donald Trump. Here is a breakdown of considerations.
Trumps Negatives:
There are compelling reasons not to vote for Donald Trump:
1. Trump has a history of strong-arming and cheating small business people and customers; he is way too litigious;
2. Trump is self-centered and competitive and he can bully – he is unlikely to do a good job of managing a complex government bureaucracy;
3. His age is not ideal – given the physical stress of the job, we would be better off with a younger person;
4. Trump does not appreciate the power and importance of the Constitution; he will too easily override it for convenience.
5. Trump is entirely too concerned with media attention rather than what is important and may achieve real substantive goals. We want to make American great again, not for him to get attention.
6. Trump was successful in industries that use entrainment technology (gambling, reality TV, online shopping) and which can drain local communities and human productivity.
Irrelevant Factors:
There are several issues regarding Trump which are irrelevant to my decision:
1. Tax Returns: I don’t need to see Trump tax returns. When an administration controlled by the opposing party has a candidate for office under IRS audit and then the candidate of that opposing party demands that he make them public, he is being put in a political “squeeze play.” Given the complexity and the various parties involved, Trump should refuse to disclose. From his public history, I am betting I can guess everything in his returns that is sensitive. He has investors from numerous countries, including Russia. He is dependent, or has been, on the good graces of many large banks. He is not as rich as he implies. He likely has paid little or no tax for many years – he is good at gaming the system. I would expect, however, his nonpayment is lawful.
2. Divide and Conquer Politics: Accusations regarding sexism and racism are being used to distract us from a more fundamental conflict – the human vs. the inhumane. The American people are being treated in ways highly inhumane.
First and foremost, we need to help all various groups to appreciate that we are all being harvested and played – the inhumanity just comes in different flavors for different groups. We see the harvesting done to ourselves and our tribe. We do not as easily see the harvesting done to other people and tribes, nor its centralized leadership and clear strategic intention. Consequently, I am interested in what the candidates say about issues of interest shared by all of us – particularly using our resources lawfully. As I once said to one of my neighbors in my highly segregated community, “if we could just collaborate regarding the government money, we could hate each other while being rich instead of poor.” Divide and conquer politics keep us squabbling among our selves while our financial and legal powers are drained away. If you want more thoughts on divide and conquer politics, I would recommend my series, “Promoting Women.”
Reasons for Supporting Trump:
Here are my reasons for supporting Trump:
1. Transparency: All real solutions require transparency. We need to get out of our media and financial bubbles and back to reality. Trump’s campaign has inspired more open conversations about suppressed issues than any other politician’s in a long time. This willingness to address the controversial demonstrates the craving for factuality and the courage to question the “official reality.”
2. Negative Return on Investment to Taxpayers: Our current governmental system is doing great harm – both here and abroad. Our political class appears unwilling to hear our legitimate concerns or to doing anything about them. At some point, after all attempts to communicate and to reform have failed, you might as well elect someone who will “crazy make” the system. First his election will throw a bucket of cold water over our political class. Our political class appears literally to have lost its mind – perhaps shock therapy will help it get some mind back. Second, maybe Trump will be a terrible President who will grind the system to a halt. Inefficiency could be a good thing if it helps to slow down or destroy a system that is destroying productivity, prosperity, and life itself.
3. Military Readiness: The US dollar reserve currency status depends on military superiority. Trump is right – we should be concerned about the condition of our military. We need a President who can establish an effective working relationship with the military.
4. Critical Issues: There are a number of critical issues where Trump comes out on the right side:
-Vaccines: Based on Trump’s statements regarding vaccines, he is less likely to support or push for mandated vaccination policies and other compromises to health freedoms.
– Common Core: Trump is on record that curriculum control should remain in local jurisdictions.
– Financial Accountability: Trump can add. He is right, that we spent $6 trillion on Middle Eastern wars, we imploded the Middle East, and we have nothing to show for it other than inferior infrastructure in many parts of America.
– Gun Control: Trump is a supporter of the Second Amendment.
The challenge is that what a candidate says during a campaign is one thing, but what he or she does in office may differ. There are no guarantees that what Trump says now will be his positions after election. He is not famous for consistency, nor has he had his post inauguration briefing on the requirements of his position and what the US government creditors require of the President. However, it is hard to imagine Trump worse on these issues than Clinton is now.
5. His Opposition: Until recently, I was confident that I was going to vote for Gary Johnson. Based on what I saw during the debates and recent announcements of support for Hillary Clinton, I am persuaded to vote for Trump despite the risks.
The arrogance and hubris of the American political class makes for a hopeless situation. The Clintons and those who have gotten rich by rigging government money and debt need to be moved aside, no matter how risky the alternatives. Sticking with the status quo means hopelessness.
I have watched many politicians lie in my lifetime. I have never seen lies as bold as Hillary Clinton’s during the first debate. The Clinton administration created, nurtured, and fed the private prison industry, rounding up thousands of innocent minority persons by entrapment while Clinton political supporters made fortunes on neighborhood gentrification and predatory lending. The Clinton administration engineered the initial phase of the financial coup d’etat and the housing bubble. The Clinton administration also oversaw the legal changes that permitted the ballooning of student debt.
This Clinton accumulating crime log means that this 2016 election is the point whereupon we finally hold the political class accountable or we do not. For many decades we have hated the policies, the corruption and the criminality, but too many of us have continued to support the criminals who developed and implemented them. This refusal to hold leaders who repeatedly break civil and criminal laws accountable has created a cycle of disrespect between the political class and the voters. Politicians believe voters are stupid and easy to manipulate. They believe we will continue to support and admire the people who created the private prison complex, the housing bubble, and financial bailouts, $21 trillion missing from US government accounts, and foreign wars costing trillions that have destroyed nations that were minding their own business.
They continue to believe they can distract us from noticing $50 trillion disappearing from the national wealth while they entertain us with Monica Lewinsky and Monica Lewinsky II.
I should also underscore that this refusal to hold individual leaders accountable has literally broken the hearts and drained the spirits of millions of honest, hard working men and women who have stood in the breach to protect you and me from this criminality throughout the public and private sectors. This corruption and loss of mind by the general population is the greatest threat to the covenant that stands behind our commitment to the principles of freedom. It is essential that it end for real change to begin.
Will we continue to support the leadership of a psychopathic system that is draining life in its many forms from this planet? Trump is an unknown who could do real damage to our system of laws, but some change is better than no change. High risk is preferable to hopelessness.
Crime that pays is crime that stays. My options are Crazy Man vs. Criminal or a third party vote that may help Criminal.
I plan to vote for Crazy Man. I invite your comment for discussion during the month of October. I will make my final decision immediately before the election.
REAL TROUBLE AHEAD
Whatever the election outcome, there will be real trouble ahead. The President of the United States, whomever is elected, will not control the levers of power.
We have a “deep state” that does. It is out of control and has engineered a significant financial coup d’etat. All signs indicate that the deep state would like to engineer serious institutional changes after the election.
There are many things we can do to power shift the situation if we are prepared to ignore Monica Lewinsky II and instead pay attention to the deeper system – to the theft of our resources at federal agencies and in the financial institutions and the trench warfare occurring at the state and local levels.
Either way, it is time to prepare for changes ahead.
I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes from the history of my old firm Dillon, Read & Co. Inc.:
“Driving through New Jersey, Nitze [asked] Dillon if he thought the market decline an omen of hard times ahead . . . Dillon thought for a few minutes and replied, “I think it presages the end of an era.” By this Dillon meant that what lay ahead was not merely a period of retrenchment, after which affairs would be conducted as before. Rather, the world was in for a major overhauling of institutions.”
—Clarence Dillon and Paul Nitze in 1929
Related Reading:
Dillon, Read & Co Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits
Trump & The African-American Elite Gravy Train: The Party’s Over
UnAnswered Questions: Hillary Clinton & the African American Community
Response to 50 National Security Officials Opposing Donald Trump
Hi Catherine,
I watched your interview with Greg Hunter when you went into the missing money. I downloaded the report from the government website and I posted them both on my FaceBook page.
I received a response from a friend who works at the DOD who couldn’t believe what he was reading. He was the only friend to actually read the report. He said “there must be a typo – their budget is under a billion dollars – they must mean million instead of trillion.”
I had a good laugh and told him that it wasn’t a typo. He then emailed the agency because he didn’t believe it. I haven’t heard from him.
Could you explain “undocumented adjustments” in one of your money and markets or interview with Greg Hunter. Government accounting is a strange animal and I don’t think people understand what it really means (myself included and I am an accountant!)
Also I would love it if you were to do a Solari report on the Clinton Foundation. I looked at their tax returns from 2013 & 2014 and would love to hear your take on them.
As always, you are one of my heros. Keep up the good fight! God bless!
Dearest Catherine,
I greatly appreciate your request for input regarding this 2016 presidential race.
Like you, I have advocated and stood for change from the status quo. So I supported and represented Bernie Sanders during our caucus process in Washington state.
Like you, I hold a dim view of the Clinton/Bush/Kissinger neoliberal nwo agenda.
I am horrified that the Clinton machine subverted the primary process to eliminate the truly popular candidate, then appointed Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to an esteemed role following the news disclosures of DNC malfeasance.
I am livid that Trump was encouraged by Bill Clinton to run. I view the Trump campaign as a Trojan Horse, a Frankenstein created by the Clintons.
I will hold my nose, clench tightly and purse my lips when voting. My vote for Hillary will be akin to ‘The Scream’ by Gustav Klimt.
Here’s why:
I sincerely believe that Trump has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This condition is defined by bullying, psychological and physical abuse, complete lack of empathy for others and a pathological tendency toward deception and blaming others when personal accountability is called for.
As much as I loathe the status quo and I have championed change, I believe that the question is not a choice between the lesser of two evils (or as I prefer to say: the evil of two lessers).
Our choice next month is this: the devil we know vs the devil we don’t.
I am terrified of the devil that I don’t know.
Please note the quote below from a friend who is a former Lieutenant Governor of the Cheyenne and Arapahoe Tribes and practicing counsel:
“Trump tweets today that he’s the only one who can fix the tax laws – because he’s the only candidate who knows the laws so well he is able to avoid paying taxes forever.
“Yeah right, I’ll bet he’ll ‘fix’ the tax laws. If elected, what do you think he’s going to do after his presidency? He’ll go back into the business world and take advantage of the ‘fixes’ that he implemented during his term. He’ll spend his term trying to set up the laws to provide even more benefits to the ultra rich. Hello.
“It’s super crazy that he’s such a failure as a business man that, as a result, he is set up to pay zero taxes for decades due to his business losses. He doesn’t contribute to anything at all…he tries to dupe his middle class ‘basket of deplorables’ into thinking he supports their middle class existence, but he certainly doesn’t mind them bearing the burden of paying for everything while people like him contribute nothing. He is the all-time scammer.
“This is Trump University all over again, but on a much bigger scale with much more dire consequences – Trump Government. ‘It’ll be terrific!! Trust me!!’
“However, anyone buying into it now won’t have a class-action remedy later.”
-AB
I’m also referencing these articles below for your consideration. Notably, I am alarmed that the Christian right views Trump as ‘their’ candidate. When I consider Trumps behavior toward those less powerful than himself, or his duplicitous business practices, I have to wonder: ‘what, if anything, about Trump represents Christian values?’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/09/28/i-sold-trump-100000-worth-of-pianos-then-he-stiffed-me/
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_579e52dee4b00e7e269fb30f?
http://money.cnn.com/2016/09/28/media/trump-hitler-new-york-times/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/books/hitler-ascent-volker-ullrich.html
Thanks for posting, Michael. I very much appreciate your taking the time.
Hi Catherine. Thank you for this wonderful thought piece which I have promptly shared! It seems many great thinkers are at work this week. A friend pointed me to several popular bloggers, James Kunstler (http://kunstler.com/) and David McAlvany (http://mcalvanyweeklycommentary.com/) who in their recent commentaries, have this past week changed their vote away from Hartman to…… , and state their reasons.
Both are forecasting out to 2020 and beyond and share the belief there is a massive 2017-2018 financial crisis. Both believe that whichever party gets into office will take the fall for it. At least Kunstler believes this alone is reason enough to vote for Clinton where the full blame of the crash will go where it should go – The Dems which will bring a massive swing away from the current status quo. McAlvany, in his weekly podcast, takes his reader through his rationale that 1) Whoever wins this election will be blamed for the 2017-2018 crises; 2) the “Biggest Loser” will be the one who wins; 3) the 2020 election will be a revolt against the 2016 winner’s ideology. Both though fail to factor in the key point you make – The Deep State effect which is the establishment regardless of party. They need just a bit more nudging to expose the fuller picture it seems, or, perhaps they just won’t go there, which is also possible. What is hopeful is the growing number of people who see the squeeze and the pickle we are in, and, as you put it, it is truly time to prepare for whats ahead. All the best,
Hi Catherine,
Can you comment more on what you mean by:
“… it is time to prepare for changes ahead.”
Can you give specifics as to what you think could be coming, and what we can do specifically to prepare?
If we get a constitutional convention, there are many possibilities.
One possibility is that we keep the constitution and add a balanced budget amendment. Depending on how it is implemented, we essentially protect the military and the creditors and cut all other subsidies, fast or slow.
Another possibility is that we rewrite the constitution in a manner that is unacceptable to numerous states and the United States breaks up into….your guess is as good as mine.
Another possibility is that it does not break up and we move to a “friendly” fascist state where individuals have very few rights and live with heavy mind control and invasive surveillance. Heavy mandates on vaccines, food, global spraying will continue to bring down the fertility rates and lower the life expectancies to ease the pressure on government budgets and accelerate the transfer of assets to young people.
One of the big variables is how much we can bring the price of energy down along the way.
Enormous variables are who is really in charge, what is happening in space REALLY and where is all the money disappearing too.
In all scenarios, the flow of federal government money domestically is likely to change, reduce or stop.
We can all brainstorm about the possibilities – but it is impossible to tell what will happen because the risks and uncertainty are so high. I have scheduled Eric Best to join us in November for a Solari Report on Scenario Design to talk about how to plan in this environment.
I will keep discussing this. However, if you read Coming Clean and listen and read many of the things I have been writing for years – the latest the last section in the Productivity part in the 2nd Quarter wrap up, I have listed out many, many times what we need to do.
https://solari.com/blog/rethinking-diversification/
At the same time, each person’s situation is unique. So hard to generalize. When you cut government debt money, the economics optimize bottom up with a vengeance. That is one of the reasons that local foods systems become so very important.
Thank you Catherine, for your response – as always, your perspective and work are so appreciated!
🙂 Blush…
Catherine, would you feel more comfortable with Trump if Pence would be a very active Vice President? Maybe act as Trump’s training wheels in dealing with Congress.
Yes, certainly.
I understand that Trump first offered the V.P. to John Kasich and that he would be given a lot of latitude on his duties. I suspect Pence was given the same offer.. With the warming of establishment Republicans towards Trump I wonder now if Kasich is kicking himself as Trump is not the youngest guy to run for President. Would welcome hearing your opinions about Kaine and Pence on Solari
Don’t know much about either one. It’s on the list!
Quote from David Geffen ; Everybody in politics lies, but they (Clintons) do it with such ease, it’s troubling.
Surprised he would allow himself to be quoted. With respect to both candidates the boil does seem to be coming to the surface.