TEA PARTY CANDIDATES BEHIND THE US GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN

VICTORIA CRAW news.com.au October 16, 2013

Senator Ted Cruz is the public face of the government shutdown. Picture: Andrew Burton, Getty images.

 
IT IS the grassroots movement that has grown into a political force strong enough to shutdown the wealthiest government in the world.

Now just 24 hours away from an unprecedented US default, Tea Party conservatives are still holding firm on their demands to defund ObamaCare before raising the debt ceiling.
So who are the Tea Party and what do they want?
Rather than an actual political party, the Tea Party is a grassroots movement based on the ideology of small government, personal freedoms and a number of core beliefs around military spending, family values and gun control.
The name comes from the famous 1773 Boston Tea Party tax protest and is also thought to be an acronym for taxed enough already - a common political mantra.
United States Studies Centre US politics lecturer Dr Adam Lockyer said the group is large, wealthy and based mainly in America's southern states.
"It's often said the Republicans in Arizona were the Tea Party before the Tea Party was around."

Republican senators walk back to their bus after meeting with President Obama. Picture: AP Photo, Charles Dharapak.

Where did they come from?
The group has a long tradition in American political culture but their recent incarnation was galvanised by the election of President Barack Obama in 2008.
"A lot of them took the election of Obama as an affront. Not necessarily on racial lines but they saw him as an outsider, liberal elite and a threat to their way of life. It was a rally cry for the Tea Party movement and gave them something to mobilise around," Dr Lockyer said.
Support has grown through conservative lobby organisations like Generation Opportunity, Young Americans for Liberty and Freedom Partners, funded by the billionaire Koch brothers.
They even have an Australian spin off pushing for corporal punishment and tougher refugee policy.

Senator Mike Lee has been a major ally of Ted Cruz in the shutdown. Picture: AP Photo, Jose Luis Magana

Who are the key players?
Dr Lockyer said it was tricky to formally identify Tea Party candidates as politicians can align themselves with the movement at different times according to their objectives.
"How many tea partiers there are it's impossible to say, they're not card carrying members. … It's a loose network more than anything else," he said.
Ted Cruz has been the main face of the Tea Party movement in the current shutdown debate, regularly stating he will do everything possible to defund ObamaCare before Americans get "hooked on the sugar" of subsidised healthcare, Rolling Stone reports.
His key allies include Utah representative Mike Lee, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Minnesota representative Michele Bachmann. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is also lending her support.
Strategists outside the government are also playing an important role. The Wall St Journal reports Michael Needham, the 31-year-old president of a conservative think tank has spent months rallying conservatives around the country to repeal the law.
"It has been on the front page of every newspaper. The polls show ObamaCare's more unpopular than ever. People are starting to wake up that it isn't going to work at all," he said.

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has been a vocal supporter of Ted Cruz.

Is it working?
On one hand, Tea Party efforts have worked in that their refusal to compromise has led to a shutdown of the US government and taken debt ceiling negotiations to within a day of default.
It's also helping to gain popularity for its champions, with a recent Gallup poll shows Cruz's name recognition in the US has risen from just over 40 per cent to just over 60 per cent during the course of the shutdown.
On the other hand, their actions have driven a wedge through the heart of the Republican party with moderate conservatives such as John McCain and Peter King openly criticising their more extreme counterparts.
"Ted Cruz led us down this path. This was a disaster from the start, I could have predicted this, and this is what the leadership predicted three weeks ago when they said they would never pursue defending because it was going to work against us and we'd be blamed," New York Republican Peter King told the media earlier this week.
McCain has also been vocal about ending the gridlock immediately.
"We got ourselves in a ditch," he said. "And we got to stop digging."
Read the latest shutdown coverage here
What do you think about the Tea Party members? Continue the conversation on Twitter @newscomauHQ | @Victoria-Craw
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INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND: AUSSIE GROWTH SLUGGISH AFTER BOOM

Colin Brinsden AAP October 12, 2013 

The Australian economy remains sluggish.

THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed it expects Australian economic growth to remain below trend this year and next, as the mining investment boom wanes.

But in a mixed assessment of Asia and the Pacific in its latest Regional Economic Outlook released in Washington on Friday, the IMF expects neighbouring New Zealand to gain a boost as its post-earthquake reconstruction is accelerated.
It has cut its economic growth forecast for the region to 5.1 per cent for 2013, down from a 5.7 per cent prediction made in April.
For 2014 growth is now seen at 5.3 per cent rather than six per cent.
It says activity among emerging economies in the region lost their impetus during the first six months of 2013.
"Tepid external demand from advanced economies and a slowdown in China dampened industrial activity throughout much of emerging Asia," it says.
At the same time, many of these economies have endured tighter financial conditions as a result of expectations that the US Federal Reserve will start winding back its monetary policy stimulus.
In India, one of Australia's major trading partners, the fallout from financial stress has likely left corporate and bank balance sheets vulnerable, leading to a further downward revision to growth forecasts that were already historically lower.
While China has been insulated from recent financial market vulnerability, the IMF expects continued measures to slow credit demand from the excesses of the past should put the economy on a slower trajectory.
The IMF has cut its growth forecasts for emerging Asia by 0.9 per cent since April for both 2013 and 2014 to 6.3 and 6.5 per cent respectively.
Among advanced countries in the region, an economic upswing in Japanese growth has been a "bright spot" and is starting to lift the country out of chronic deflation.
"In Australia, a slowdown in the resource investment boom will drag down growth but in New Zealand continued low interest rates and the acceleration of post-earthquake reconstruction will provide a boost to the economy," it said.
As in the World Economic Outlook released earlier this week, the IMF lowered its Australian forecasts to 2.5 per cent for this year and 2.8 per cent for the next, bringing it more into line with Australian Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia's forecasts.

http://www.news.com.au/national-news/international-monetary-fund-aussie-growth-sluggish-after-boom/story-fncynjr2-1226738673095

U.S. JUST DAYS AWAY FROM 'VERY DANGEROUS MOMENT'

REUTERS October 13, 2013
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Reuters World Bank President Jim Yong Kim addresses the plenary session at the start of the annual IMF-World Bank fall meetings in Washington, October 11, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The president of the World Bank on Saturday warned the United States was just "days away" from causing a global economic disaster unless politicians come up with a plan to raise the nation's debt limit and avoid default.

"We're now five days away from a very dangerous moment. I urge U.S. policymakers to quickly come to a resolution before they reach the debt ceiling deadline...Inaction could result in interest rates rising, confidence falling and growth slowing," World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said in a briefing following a meeting of the bank's Development Committee.
"If this comes to pass, it could be a disastrous event for the developing world, and that will in turn greatly hurt developed economies as well," he said.
(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov and Lidia Kelly; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
 
http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/19369574/u-s-just-days-away-from-very-dangerous-moment-world-bank/

US DEBT SOLUTION MAY NOT BE PRETTY: HOCKEY

AAP October 13, 2013

AAP Treasurer says the impact of a US debt default would be catastrophic but doubts it will eventuate.

Treasurer Joe Hockey is confident the United States will sort out its fiscal crisis and end a partial government shutdown but warns the solution may not be pretty.

The US Senate is scrambling to piece together a bipartisan exit strategy as the shutdown enters its 12th day.
House Republicans are blaming President Barack Obama for a collapse of talks on extended borrowing.
Mr Hockey is in Washington for meetings with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
He says the impact of a US debt default would be "catastrophic".
"I'm absolutely confident, having spoken to a number of congressmen and senators from both sides of the house ... there will be a resolution, it might not be pretty ... America will not default," he told Sky News on Sunday.
"We are in for a continuing volatile period."
Mr Hockey described the tactics of the Tea Party members as extreme.
"The lesson for us is to understand that it should never get to this point," he said, adding that governments must live within their means.
"America can no longer afford its lifestyle."

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/19369540/us-debt-solution-may-not-be-pretty-hockey/ 

 

KAREN HUDES: WE'RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME! WE'RE DEALING WITH WHETHER WE CAN CONTINUE AS HUMANITY

CANADA’S DOLLAR DROPS AGAINST AUSTRALIA’S AS U.S. SHUTS DOWN

By John Detrixhe & Andrea Wong - Oct 2, 2013

 

The Canadian dollar fell against its so-called commodity-currency counterpart in Australia as the U.S. government began its first partial shutdown in 17 years, imperiling growth in Canada’s biggest trading partner.
The currency, called the loonie, weakened against the majority of its 16 most-traded peers as debate looms on raising the U.S. debt ceiling within three weeks. Australia’s dollar climbed after the nation’s Reserve Bank left borrowing costs unchanged today. The U.S. dollar fell versus most major counterparts. A partial shutdown of the federal government would cost the U.S. at least $300 million a day in lost economic output at the start, according to IHS Inc. (IHS)
“We’ve got uncertainty whether or not Canadian exports to the U.S. are going to rebound sharply over the next several months with this uncertainty over the government shutdown and the U.S. economic outlook,” David Watt, chief economist at the Canadian unit of HSBC Holdings Plc, said in a phone interview. “It makes sense the Canadian dollar would lag its commodity peers during an episode such as this. It will behave more like the U.S. dollar because of the close ties.”
The loonie, nicknamed for the image of the aquatic bird on the C$1 coin, weakened 1 percent to 97.02 cents per Australian dollar at 5 p.m. in Toronto.
Canada’s currency depreciated 0.1 percent to C$1.0322 per U.S. dollar. One Canadian dollar buys 96.88 U.S. cents.

Benchmark Bonds

Canada’s benchmark 10-year government bond fell, pushing the yield up two basis points to 2.56 percent. The price of the 1.5 percent security maturing in June 2023 slipped 14 cents to C$90.97.
Implied volatility for one-year options on the Canadian dollar versus its U.S. counterpart rose to 7.1 percent, the highest on a closing basis since Sept. 16. Implied volatility is used to set option prices and gauge the expected pace of currency swings. The average for this year is 7.39 percent.
Options traders touched the most bearish level on the Canadian dollar versus its U.S. peer in three weeks. The three-month so-called 25 delta risk-reversal rate, which measures the premium charged for the right to buy the U.S. dollar against its Canadian peer versus contracts to sell, reached 1.375 percent, matching yesterday’s high, the most since Sept. 6.
The Canadian dollar lost 0.9 percent in the past month against nine developed-market peers tracked by the Bloomberg Correlation Weighted Index. The U.S. dollar dropped 3.2 percent, while the Australian currency gained 2.1 percent. 

To contact the reporters on this story: John Detrixhe in New York at jdetrixhe1@bloomberg.net; Andrea Wong in New York at awong268@bloomberg.net
 
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-01/canada-s-dollar-falls-against-australia-s-as-u-s-shuts-down.html

 

WORLD BANK INSIDER BLOWS WHISTLE ON CORRUPTION, FEDERAL RESERVE

Wednesday, 22 May 2013 Written by  Alex Newman

A former insider at the World Bank, ex-Senior Counsel Karen Hudes, says the global financial system is dominated by a small group of corrupt, power-hungry figures centered around the privately owned U.S. Federal Reserve. The network has seized control of the media to cover up its crimes, too, she explained. In an interview with The New American, Hudes said that when she tried to blow the whistle on multiple problems at the World Bank, she was fired for her efforts. Now, along with a network of fellow whistleblowers, Hudes is determined to expose and end the corruption. And she is confident of success. 

Citing an explosive 2011 Swiss study published in the PLOS ONE journal on the “network of global corporate control,” Hudes pointed out that a small group of entities — mostly financial institutions and especially central banks — exert a massive amount of influence over the international economy from behind the scenes. “What is really going on is that the world’s resources are being dominated by this group,” she explained, adding that the “corrupt power grabbers” have managed to dominate the media as well. “They’re being allowed to do it.”

According to the peer-reviewed paper, which presented the first global investigation of ownership architecture in the international economy, transnational corporations form a “giant bow-tie structure.” A large portion of control, meanwhile, “flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions.” The researchers described the core as an “economic ‘super-entity’” that raises important issues for policymakers and researchers. Of course, the implications are enormous for citizens as well.

Hudes, an attorney who spent some two decades working in the World Bank’s legal department, has observed the machinations of the network up close. “I realized we were now dealing with something known as state capture, which is where the institutions of government are co-opted by the group that’s corrupt,” she told The New American in a phone interview. “The pillars of the U.S. government — some of them — are dysfunctional because of state capture; this is a big story, this is a big cover up.”

At the heart of the network, Hudes said, are 147 financial institutions and central banks — especially the Federal Reserve, which was created by Congress but is owned by essentially a cartel of private banks. “This is a story about how the international financial system was secretly gamed, mostly by central banks — they’re the ones we are talking about,” she explained. “The central bankers have been gaming the system. I would say that this is a power grab.”

The Fed in particular is at the very center of the network and the coverup, Hudes continued, citing a policy and oversight body that includes top government and Fed officials. Central bankers have also been manipulating gold prices, she added, echoing widespread concerns that The New American has documented extensively. Indeed, even the inaccurate World Bank financial statements that Hudes has been trying to expose are linked to the U.S. central bank, she said. 

“The group that we’re talking about from the Zurich study — that’s the Federal Reserve; it has some other pieces to it, but that’s the Federal Reserve,” Hudes explained. “So the Federal Reserve secretly dominated the world economy using secret, interlocking corporate directorates, and terrorizing anybody who managed to figure out that they were having any kind of role, and putting people in very important positions so that they could get a free pass.”

The shadowy but immensely powerful Bank for International Settlements serves as “the club of these private central bankers,” Hudes continued. “Now, are people going to want interest on their country’s debts to continue to be paid to that group when they find out the secret tricks that that group has been doing? Don’t forget how they’ve enriched themselves extraordinarily and how they’ve taken taxpayer money for the bailout.”

As far as intervening in the gold price, Hudes said it was an effort by the powerful network and its central banks to “hold onto its paper currency” — a suspicion shared by many analysts and even senior government officials. The World Bank whistleblower also said that contrary to official claims, she did not believe there was any gold being held in Fort Knox. Even congressmen and foreign governments have tried to find out if the precious metals were still there, but they met with little success. Hudes, however, believes the scam will eventually come undone.

“This is like crooks trying to figure out where they can go hide. It’s a mafia,” she said. “These culprits that have grabbed all this economic power have succeeded in infiltrating both sides of the issue, so you will find people who are supposedly trying to fight corruption who are just there to spread disinformation and as a placeholder to trip up anybody who manages to get their act together.… Those thugs think that if they can keep the world ignorant, they can bleed it longer.”

Of course, the major corruption at the highest levels of government and business is not a new phenomenon. Georgetown University historian and Professor Carroll Quigley, who served as President Bill Clinton’s mentor, for example, wrote about the scheme in his 1966 book Tragedy And Hope: A History Of The World In Our Time. The heavyweight academic, who was allowed to review documents belonging to the top echelons of the global establishment, even explained how the corrupt system would work — remarkably similar to what Hudes describes.

"The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole,” wrote Prof. Quigley, who agreed with the goals but not the secrecy. “This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations."

But it is not going to happen, Hudes said — at least not if she has something do to with it. While the media are dominated by the “power grabber” network, Hudes has been working with foreign governments, reporters, U.S. officials, state governments, and a broad coalition of fellow whistleblowers to blow the entire scam wide open. There has been quite a bit of interest, too, particularly among foreign governments and state officials in the United States.

Citing the wisdom of America’s Founding Fathers in creating a federal system of government with multiple layers of checks and balances, Hudes said she was confident that the network would eventually be exposed and subjected to the rule of law, stopping the secret corruption. If and when that happens — even if it may be disorderly — Hudes says precious metals will once again play a role in imposing discipline on the monetary system. The rule of law would also be restored, she said, and the public will demand a proper press to stay informed.

“We’re going to have a cleaned-up financial system, that’s where it is going, but in the meantime, people who didn’t know how the system was gamed are going to find out,” she said. “We’re going to have a different kind of international financial system.... It’ll be a new kind of world where people know what’s going on — no more backroom deals; that’s not going to keep happening. We’re going to have a different kind of media if people don’t want to be dominated and controlled, which I don’t think they do.”

While Hudes sounded upbeat, she recognizes that the world is facing serious danger right now — there are even plans in place to impose martial law in the United States, she said. The next steps will be critical for humanity. As such, Hudes argues, it is crucial that the people of the world find out about the lawlessness, corruption, and thievery that are going on at the highest levels — and put a stop to it once and for all. The consequences of inaction would be disastrous.      

^{Photo of World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C.}

Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/economics/item/15473-world-bank-insider-blows-whistle-on-corruption-federal-reserve