Gretchen Gets It. The entire article is worth reading and even studying. If you get what she is saying, you can understand just how false this Waltz has been.
“The very design of the federal assistance to A.I.G. was that tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.’s counterparties.” The report noted that this was money the banks might not otherwise have received had A.I.G. gone belly-up.
Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and other banks were in the group that got full value for their contracts when many others were accepting fire-sale prices.
Ms. Tavakoli argues that Goldman should refund the money it received in the bailout and take back the toxic C.D.O.’s now residing on the Fed’s books — and to do so before it begins showering bonuses on its taxpayer-protected employees.
According to an e-mail message that Goldman sent to the New York Fed at the time, Mr. Geithner talked about the article with Mr. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, before calling me. When Mr. Geithner called, he said that Goldman had no exposure to an A.I.G. collapse and that the article had left an incorrect impression about that. When I asked Mr. Geithner if he, as head of the regulatory agency overseeing Goldman, had closely examined the firm’s hedges, he said he had not.
Probing, in-depth analyses of regulatory responses to the financial meltdown are worth their weight in gold. Mr. Barofsky’s certainly is. Yet in its rush to put financial reforms into effect, Congress seems uninterested in investigating or grappling with truths contained in such reports — and until it does, our country’s economic and financial system will continue to be at risk.
Revisiting a Fed Waltz With A.I.G.
A RAY of sunlight broke through the Washington fog last week when Neil M. Barofsky, special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, published his office’s report on the government bailout last year of the American International Group.
It’s must reading for any taxpayer hoping to understand why the $182 billion “rescue” of what was once the world’s largest insurer still ranks as the most troubling episode of the financial disaster. And it couldn’t have come at a more pivotal moment.
Many in Washington want to give more regulatory power to the Federal Reserve Board, the banking regulator that orchestrated the A.I.G. bailout. Through this prism, the actions taken in the deal by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at the time, grow curiouser and curiouser.
Of special note in the report: the Fed failed to develop a workable rescue plan when A.I.G., swamped by demands that it pay off huge insurance contracts that it couldn’t make good on as the economy tanked, began to sink. The report takes the Fed to task as refusing to use its power and prestige to wrestle concessions from A.I.G.’s big, sophisticated and well-heeled trading partners when the government itself had to pay off the contracts.
The Fed, under Mr. Geithner’s direction, caved in to A.I.G.’s counterparties, giving them 100 cents on the dollar for positions that would have been worth far less if A.I.G. had defaulted. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Société Générale and other banks were in the group that got full value for their contracts when many others were accepting fire-sale prices.
On the question of whether this payout was what the report describes as a “backdoor bailout” of A.I.G.’s counterparties, Mr. Barofsky concluded: “The very design of the federal assistance to A.I.G. was that tens of billions of dollars of government money was funneled inexorably and directly to A.I.G.’s counterparties.” The report noted that this was money the banks might not otherwise have received had A.I.G. gone belly-up.
The report zaps Fed claims that identifying banks that benefited from taxpayer largess would have dire consequences. Fed officials had refused to disclose the identities of the counterparties or details of the payments, warning “that disclosure of the names would undermine A.I.G.’s stability, the privacy and business interests of the counterparties, and the stability of the markets,” the report said.
When the parties were named, “the sky did not fall,” the report said.
Finally, Mr. Barofsky pokes holes in arguments made repeatedly over the past 14 months by Goldman Sachs, A.I.G.’s largest trading partner and recipient of $12.9 billion in taxpayer money in the bailout, that it had faced no material risk in an A.I.G. default — that, in effect, had A.I.G. cratered, Goldman wouldn’t have suffered damage.
In short, there’s an awful lot jammed into this 36-page report.
Even before publishing this analysis, Mr. Barofsky had made a name for himself as one of the few truth tellers in Washington. While others estimate how much the taxpayer will make on various bailout programs, Mr. Barofsky has said that returns are extremely unlikely.
His office has also opened 65 cases to investigate potential fraud in various bailout programs. “When I first took office, I can’t tell you how many times I’d be having a sit-down and warning about potential fraud in the program and I would hear a response basically saying, ‘Oh, they’re bankers, and they wouldn’t put their reputations at risk by committing fraud,’ ” Mr. Barofsky told Bloomberg News a little over a week ago, adding: “I think we’ve done a good job of instilling a greater degree of skepticism that what comes from Wall Street isn’t necessarily the holy grail.”
Mr. Barofsky says the Fed failed to strong-arm the banks when it was negotiating payouts on the A.I.G. contracts. Rather than forcing the banks to accept a steep discount, or “haircut,” the Fed gave the banks $27 billion in taxpayer cash and allowed them to keep an additional $35 billion in collateral already posted by A.I.G. That amounted to about $62 billion for the contracts, which the report describes as “far above their market value at the time.”
Mr. Geithner, who oversaw those negotiations, said in an interview on Friday that the terms of the A.I.G. deal were the best he could get for taxpayers. He considered bailing out A.I.G. to be “offensive,’ he said, but deemed it necessary because a collapse would have undermined the financial system.
“We prevented A.I.G. from defaulting because our judgment was that the damage caused by failure would have been much more costly for the economy and the taxpayer,” Mr. Geithner said. “To most Americans, this looked like a deeply unfair outcome and they find it hard to see any direct benefit. But in fact, their savings are more valuable and secure today.”
The report said that while bailing out Goldman and other investment banks might not have been the intent behind the Fed’s A.I.G. rescue, it certainly was its effect. “By providing A.I.G. with the capital to make these payments, Federal Reserve officials provided A.I.G.’s counterparties with tens of billions of dollars they likely would have not otherwise received had A.I.G. gone into bankruptcy,” the report stated.
As Goldman prepares to pay out nearly $17 billion in bonuses to its employees in one of its most profitable years ever, it is important that an authoritative, independent voice like Mr. Barofsky’s reminds us how the taxpayer bailout of A.I.G. benefited Goldman.
A Goldman spokesman, Lucas van Praag, said that Goldman believed “that a collapse of A.I.G. would have had a very disruptive effect on the financial system and that everyone benefited from the rescue of A.I.G.” Regarding his firm’s own dealings with A.I.G., Mr. van Praag said that Goldman believed that its “exposure was close to zero” because it insulated itself from a downturn in A.I.G.’s fortunes through hedges and collateral it had already received. (Goldman’s complete response is here.)
The inspector noted in his report that Goldman made several arguments for why it believed it was not materially at risk in an A.I.G. default, but he is skeptical of the firm’s reasoning.
So is Janet Tavakoli, an expert in derivatives at Tavakoli Structured Finance, a consulting firm. “On Sept. 16, 2008, David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, said that whatever the outcome at A.I.G., the direct impact of Goldman’s credit exposure would be immaterial,” she said. “That was false. The report states that if the New York Fed had negotiated concessions, Goldman would have suffered a loss.”
The report says that Goldman would have had difficulty collecting on the hedges it used to insulate itself from an A.I.G. default because everyone’s wallets would have been closing in a panic.
“The prices of the collateralized debt obligations against which Goldman bought protection from A.I.G. were in sickening free fall, and the cost of replacing A.I.G.’s protection would have been sky-high,” she said. “Goldman must have known this, because it underwrote some of those value-destroying C.D.O.’s.”
Ms. Tavakoli argues that Goldman should refund the money it received in the bailout and take back the toxic C.D.O.’s now residing on the Fed’s books — and to do so before it begins showering bonuses on its taxpayer-protected employees.
“A.I.G., a sophisticated investor, foolishly took this risk,” she said. “But the U.S. taxpayer never agreed to be a victim of investments that should undergo a rigorous audit.”
Perhaps Mr. Barofsky will do that audit, and closely examine the securities that A.I.G. insured and that Wall Street titans like Goldman underwrote.
Goldman contends that it had a contractual right to the funds it received in the A.I.G. bailout and that the securities it returned to the government in the deal have increased in value.
For his part, Mr. Geithner disputed much of the inspector general’s findings. He also took issue with the conclusion that the Fed failed to develop a contingency plan for an A.I.G. rescue and largely depended on plans proffered by the banks themselves.
He said the report’s view that the Fed didn’t use its might to get better terms in the rescue was unfair. “This idea that we were unwilling to use leverage to get better terms misses the central reality of the situation — the choice we had was to let A.I.G. default or to prevent default,” he said. “We could not enforce haircuts without causing selective defaults and selective defaults would have brought down the company.”
Mr. Geithner also said that the “perception that this decision by the government, not my decision alone, was made to protect any individual investment bank is unfounded.”
Less than two weeks after the A.I.G. bailout, Mr. Geithner took the firm’s side when he criticized a Sept. 28, 2008, article in The New York Times that I wrote about the A.I.G. bailout. That article included Goldman’s statement that it wouldn’t have been affected by an A.I.G. collapse. Among other things, the article, like Mr. Barofsky’s report, questioned Goldman’s assertion.
According to an e-mail message that Goldman sent to the New York Fed at the time, Mr. Geithner talked about the article with Mr. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, before calling me. When Mr. Geithner called, he said that Goldman had no exposure to an A.I.G. collapse and that the article had left an incorrect impression about that. When I asked Mr. Geithner if he, as head of the regulatory agency overseeing Goldman, had closely examined the firm’s hedges, he said he had not.
Mr. Geithner told me on Friday that he spoke with Mr. Viniar that day to ensure that Goldman’s hedges were adequate. And, notwithstanding the inspector general’s findings, he said he still believes Goldman was hedged.
Probing, in-depth analyses of regulatory responses to the financial meltdown are worth their weight in gold. Mr. Barofsky’s certainly is. Yet in its rush to put financial reforms into effect, Congress seems uninterested in investigating or grappling with truths contained in such reports — and until it does, our country’s economic and financial system will continue to be at risk.
Filed under: bubble, CDO, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage | Tagged: A.I.G., AIG, American International Group, Barofsky, congress, counterparties, Federal reserve Bank of New York, Federal reserve Baord, Geithner, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Societe Generale, TARP, Tavakoli, Troubled Asset Relief Program, Viniar |
I’ve got a mediation offer for the Fed and the member banks. When they make good on their Notes, by paying one ounze of gold for every $50 I present to them, then I’ll make good on my mortgage Note by giving them my house. But until that time, I’ll just keep my house, thank you, and ask them to produce the original, blue ink, “wet copy” of the Note and the proper assignment of the mortgage!
Personnaly, I don’t think the Fed and it buddies,
the member banks will be able to do either, so I’ll
just keep my house. How about we all just keep our
homes, free and clear as per the wonderful offer I’ve
made above!
sorry I misspelled the word LIAR in my comment below
Hi stopGOVTwaste,
yes just this morning I was talking to some people of this please let us do this all together, please contact me my friend has the lawsuit written. Can we start asap please?
malibubooks@gmail.com
to: J L SEMIDEY
You hit the nail right on head my friend in regards to Lawyers which in reality should be call LIERS, myself and my family have been taken by an irresponsible “lier/lawyer” that every once in a while writes some really shity “articles” here in Neil’s blog, that frankly turn my stomach inside out, I write better than this idiot and i am certainly not a LIER like he is! and what makes me even angrier is that this LIER is taking money right and left from many other people that are scared and looking for somebody to help them, instead he is screwing them!, never seen a more “feelingless” and incompetent person than this guy, he has no clue what the hell he is doing, but he is very prompt in sending his “monthly” bills to collect for doing nothing. I am currently preparing a letter of complaint to the Ca. state bar in which i am going to describe in detail what this scammer/lier is doing to people, and I will get my money back also, that i guarantee!! i made him only one payment because it did not take long to see what this goof really is, and after pushing and pushing him he drew the stupidest and more laughable compliant i have ever seen. Then when i decided to fire him he’s start telling me all this crap about how i should file the complaint because is good for me. If i would’ve filed that complaint in court, the judge would have kicked my ass out of his court so fast, that’s the reason I decided no to take a chance, instead i am in search for a “real” attorney that knows what the hell he is doing. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE(and you know who i am too), I KNOW YOU READ THIS BLOG, AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU HAVE IT COMING, AND NOT FOR ONE SECOND THINK THAT I AM AFRAID OF YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE A LAWYER/LIER, in fact turning you in and your partners in crime to the state bar will give me great pleasure. Eventually i”ll expose you to this blog as well, no i haven’t forgotten about you taking my money and I will get it back from you, I’ll do whatever it takes to do so.
*Mario / JL / Foreclosure Fraud / et al in FLORIDA
I bet there are many of us here in FL that would support the
idea of filing action(s) as a Special Attorney General?
Email stop_govt_waste@hotmail.com to express support and help promote the idea of obtaining equitable justice. Please put ex rel in the subject line.
Ex rel – “ex rel.” conj. abbreviation for Latin ex relatione, meaning “upon being related” or “upon information,” used in the title of a legal proceeding filed by a state attorney general (or the federal Department of Justice) on behalf of the government, on the instigation of a private person, who needs the state to enforce the rights of himself/herself and the public. For example, the caption would read: The State of Tennessee ex rel. Archie Johnson v. Hardy Products.
Please post the email address of these judges and I will sent them these to read and act and after reading these if they do not act and sleep in the same bed with the impostor lenders then we will file judicial complaints against these judges too.
American International Group Inc. had an option to make Europe its new home. Bloomberg reports Wednesday that Allianz SE, Europe’s largest insurer, made a joint offer with private equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC for the troubled U.S. firm. The bid was ultimately rejected by AIG in favor of an $85 billion bailout by the Federal Reserve.
Hummmm sounds like AIG and Goldman from the start want to fleece the taxpayer. If Allianz took over AIG it would have forced the “haircuts” Goldman want no part of that. The only way to tackle this one bite at a time. I am doing my part how about you?
JLSEMIDEY, said…
“I just hope all these crooked judges are reading these articles. ”
JLSEMIDEY et al,
It is really easy to figure out email addresses of public officials… If anyone is interested I can post a how to on it on my blog…
4closureFraud
Friday, November 20, 2009
Lawyer’s foreclosure defense of ‘quiet title’ faces tests
Jacksonville Business Journal – by Kimberly Morrison
April Charney of Jacksonville Area Legal Aid.
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The house at 12920 Mt. Pleasant Road is a modest ranch-style home. The man in it is John McCampbell, a 61-year-old car mechanic who lives with his two children and fiancée.
He took out a $156,000 mortgage from the now-defunct Washington Mutual, which foreclosed on his home in 2004 after he lost his job. But when the lender was unable to produce the deed to prove it had a right to foreclose, McCampbell beat the foreclosure and remains there today.
Now McCampbell and his Fort Caroline home are poised to make history in foreclosure defense with an experimental legal approach that would wipe out his mortgage debt and hand him a clean deed. It’s called a “quiet title,” where the court establishes a party’s title to the property to remove or “quiet” any challenges or claims to it.
It sounds like an impossible endeavour. But April Charney, a Jacksonville Area Legal Aid attorney, has spent the past four years teaching lawyers across the country the legal framework of this foreclosure defense. With an average of 3,000 foreclosures filed every month in Jacksonville alone, there’s no shortage of lawyers tapping her expertise.
“It’s an exceptionally layered, nuanced practice of law, but right now a very productive one,” Charney said recently after her latest sold-out seminar in Jacksonville.
Bankers counter that Charney is taking advantage of a legal technicality.
Anthony DiMarco, executive vice president of governmental affairs for the Florida Bankers Association, said errors on assignments are not tantamount to a person not being responsible for their mortgage.
“When you are doing lots and lots of anything — and there were lots of these loans written — there are human beings involved and there were mistakes along the way just like anything else,” DiMarco said.
‘Show me the note’
Before asking the court to quiet a title, a foreclosure must be dormant for five years. That brings Charney to a critical juncture in many of her early cases where the five years is at or near its expiration. She’ll be seeking multiple quiet titles in 2010, including one for McCampbell, her client.
Charney is a national authority on foreclosure defense, and a driving force behind what is often called the “show me the note” movement making its way through jurisdictions across the country. The strategy is crippling lenders’ ability to foreclose on homes when they are not able to produce the note as evidence of their right to bring a foreclosure.
At the crux of her argument is the very loan itself, securitized loans that became commonplace in the late 1990s, and quickly dominated mortgage lending practice.
Mortgage securitization is the process of bundling home loans into securities and selling them to investors. Mortgage servicers collect monthly payments and distribute them to securities investors.
But Charney said the critical error was that the originating lenders systematically pledged the loans, and didn’t actually transfer them to the trusts that are supposed to hold them and issue the securities. The result is a paper trail that goes nowhere, and a reasonably successful legal strategy.
‘A red herring’
A secondary snag in lenders’ ability to obtain a foreclosure is the physical note, or lack thereof. The Florida Bankers Association testified to the Supreme Court task force on residential mortgage foreclosure that originals were “deliberately eliminated to avoid confusion” when entered into an electronic format. The problem with that is the court requires an original.
Ownership transfers after the foreclosure has been assigned, copies of notes and false signatures have been argued to amount to fraud.
“The ‘produce the note’ argument is really a red herring,” said Chip Parker, a Jacksonville foreclosure defense attorney. “The note is often produced at some point in the litigation, but the real problem is, how did they get it? When did they get it? And did the transfer of ownership comport with federal and Florida law for the transfer of such negotiable instruments?”
In cases that are dismissed based on these arguments, foreclosure defense attorneys said lenders aren’t as eager to re-file the case.
“There is some sloppiness, and what used to be tolerated by the courts is no longer being tolerated because the judges are starting to see the effect of sloppy pleading,” Parker said.
A slippery slope?
Lenders bringing foreclosures and attorneys defending them both claim to be on the side of their communities. Lawyers said the best thing for neighborhood stability and property values is to keep people in their homes. Bankers have a different approach.
“The best thing is to get through the foreclosure as quickly as you can,” DiMarco said. “The faster you can get through a foreclosure process, the faster we can get it sold and in the hands of someone who can get to be a contributing member of the community.”
DiMarco maintained that lenders are doing everything they can to work with homeowners and avoid a money-losing foreclosure, but took notice of a new phenomenon in the housing market — strategic foreclosures on the part of consumers. With courts backed up, mortgages upside down and banks more timid about foreclosing, some consumers who can pay are opting not to.
Lawyers don’t advise those who can afford to make their mortgage payments to stop in hopes they can get a free house out of it, and aren’t convinced that their tactics could provide an incentive for people to intentionally enter foreclosure. They point out that these are long, hard-fought battles that destroy credit.
Lawyers recognize that there must be some end other than a country full of ownerless and free homes. Charney is fiercely advocating a federal intervention, which bankers similarly see as the only reasonable solution.
“I had the vice president of a big mortgage company ask me, ‘What you’re doing here — do you understand what’s going to happen? You’re going to destroy the country. And if you don’t stop, we’re just going to go to Congress and get the laws changed.’ ” said Max Gardner III, a Shelby, N.C.-based bankruptcy attorney who also teaches foreclosure defense. “And my response is, ‘We have some changes we’d like to make, too.’ ”
kmorrison@bizjournals.com | 265-2218
These mortgage bankers just do not get it!
I am not a dead beat, I had an income of over $450,000 per year at the time I bought my home. Which I bought by putting 30% down with the proceeds from my previous home and my savings of 26 years of hard work.
They want to change the laws, fine, we will then change the lawmakers!!!!!
You crooks can play your games and we will have to play pour as well.
LAWYERS WHEN WILL YOU WAKE UP AND UNDERSTAND YOU DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH THESE THIEVES.
YOU SUE THEM AND BRAKE THEM DOWN ONE HOME AT A TIME.
I just hope all these crooked judges are reading these articles.
Theses lenders got paid already but their minions are still working to get pour houses.
Then they stand in front of these screwball judges and tell them we are the ones who would get a wind fall. The saddest part is that most people just dig their heads under ground and most lawyers are just charging people monthly retainers to play the delay game trying to avoid a fight they most likely would win if they actually showed up prepared to court.
Why would I fight?
BECAUSE I AM ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF ALL THIS MESS!
I WANT JUSTICE AND A FAIR CHANCE TO FIGHT FOR MY RIGHTS>
I HAVE A FEELING THAT WE DO NOT HAVE A CHANCE IN THE WORLD TO FIGHT THESE PEOPLE.
That this happened in front of our face and no one did or said nothing to stop it, then anything can happen.
Wow, I know that Deutsche bank NA got 12 billion tax payer dollars, free. Now I shall read this article.
Yes, that article is really ironic. Could it be that the
gullible “sheeple” of the USA are starting to understand that the Federal Reserve System is an
association of private banks which now has the ex-clusive right of “Note Issue”.
Federal Reserve Notes are private bank notes which until 1968 were redeemable in “lawful money
at any Federal Reserve Bank or the US Treasury’.
These Fed Notes are backed by privately held debt
instruments from the private sector. Until 1968, the
redemption clause prevented the banks from over
inflating the money supply . In June 1968, Congress
removed the “redemption clause”. However, by
the law of contracts, they are supposed to be redeemable at one ounze of gold for $50. Where is all
the gold? It’s still there in the FED. Reserve Bank of
NY and in Fort Knox. Why does it take over 1000 fed
notes to buy an ounze of gold? Because Fed Notes are trading at a huge discount. This situation occurred after the 1789 and again after 1865. In both
cases, the notes were eventually redeemed at par.
The result was massive deflation, but it was an honest solution to the problem of banks and government flooding the market with fiat currency.
Right now, either the Bond market or the currency
is going to crash. It would be better to let the bond
market crash and save the currency. This way
everyone would start over debt free and the people’s
cash would go up in value instead of down.
With everyone debt free, the economy would take
off as everyone adjusted to lower prices and wages.
I know it sounds like a pipe dream, but the alternative
is equally unthinkable, ie trying to inflate away the un-
payable debts. Alexander Hamilton was a financial
genius and he solved this problem by setting up the
First United States Bank by using the (government)
national debt as a basis for the issuance of a new
gold and silver backed currency. The only mistake he
made was bimetalism. We could avoid that by using
just gold for international settlements and silver for
domestic settlements. It’s a complicated solution
and it involves taxation every time a new issue of
US Notes (red label) is issued. The Republicans
won’t like that, but hey, they got US in this mess so
they should just shut up and let a resurrected Federalist Party do its job of reforming the Nations
money and banking system so that it agrees with the
US Constitution and its original banking laws.
Perhaps Tim Geithner could be the new Alexander
Hamilton, since I’m sure he understands what needs
to be done to avoid disaster. Will he rise to the occasion? Only time will tell!
Wow, look what the Associated Press says the Fed did to save us:
“The Fed’s very independence and its unique ability among U.S. institutions to create money out of thin air enabled it to act quickly to stabilize the nation’s financial system after it froze up last September after the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers investment house, Fed backers say.”
They are just amazing aren’t they? Where would we be without them?
From: Congress is losing its patience with the Fed
www msnbc msn com/id/34093776/ns/business-us_business/
Thanks,
Dan Edstrom
dmedstrom@hotmail.com
When I look at the inflated loans in my own neighborhood that were made with no money down,
it is clear the lenders never intended the loans to be paid back. The whole scam was to produce as many
Notes as possible, bundle them together in CDO’s,
sell them several times over, insure them with AIG,
and wait for them to default so they could collect on the insurance. AIG did not do “due diligence” on these
contracts, and so they got burned, or rather the tax payers got burned because they became the insurers
of last resort on these fraudulent contracts.
So the bottom line is the banks who funded these
rediculous loans, designed to fail, made huge profits
off them and then passed the losses to the taxpayer.
This is why we need to Nationalize the New York Fed and turn it into the Third United States Bank a la
Alexander Hamilton. All the gold stored therein should
be confiscated by the US government and used to
redeem all outstanding Federal Reserve Notes at the
official gold exchange of $50/oz. We can’t save the bond market, but we can save the US dollar by making
all Federal Reserve Notes redeemable. Since Federal
Reserve Notes outsatanding only make up about 2%
of the money supply, this could easily be done with
the help of the gold stored in Fort Knox. All the gold
bugs, who have been speculating against the dollar
would get burned badly, but what the hey, its the American people who hold dollars, not the speculators who should be protected. Given the fact
that all the mortgages since 2001 are unenforceable,
we would have a deflation which puts assets back into
the hands of Mainstreet instead of Wall Street and the
traitorous speculators in gold!