Topic category:  Government/Politics

On Wednesday, June 18, 2009, Obama announced a sweeping expansion of government powers that eclipsed any such expansion in the history of the US Government. Aimed at the financial industry, the so-called “reforms” laid the groundwork for a future nationalism of banks, mortgage companies and other financial institutions.

Not content with the pervasive invasions of privacy represented by the term Big Brother, our Socialist-in-Chief has apparently decided that government should have its heavy boot on the heads of Americans by controlling every aspect of their lives. History shows that the most effective way to control a people is to control their money.

Only dictators and Communist strong men have wielded the power that Obama is gathering unto himself. Last week I said that Obama has created more “Czars” in a few months than the Romanoff family did in three centuries of rule in Russia. (Obama’s “Czars” are bureaucrats who have far-reaching power in a certain realm, such as health care. Because they answer only to the president, they often override and usurp the authority of elected officials.) These mini-dictators will change our most basic institutions in ways that will advance Obama’s radical left agenda, and erode our God-given freedoms.

We have already seen how Obama has taken over the automobile industry. With the power he has gained there, it will not be long before only “green” automobiles will be allowed in the United States. We are not talking about the color of the cars (although there have been serious discussions of outlawing dark colors because they absorb heat and waste energy). We’re talking about cars that will meet unrealistic mileage standards, standards that cannot be met on a cost-effective basis with current technology. No problem. All we have to do is reduce the size of our cars to that of a go-cart, and their comfort level to that of a jail cell. Americans will be allowed the privilege of suffering for the common good.

Meanwhile Obama: 1) Flies his wife to New York City (at taxpayer expense) for a “date night.” Cost: Hundreds of thousands of dollars (The White House refused to give cost details) for trips to and from Andrews Air Force Base on Marine One, a round-trip flight to “The City” by jet, two other jets to carry his aides and reporters (why does he need aides to go on a date?), and gas for his fleet of limos.
2) Sends Air Force One accompanied by two fighter jets on a flight over New York City that frightened thousands of New Yorkers who feared it was another attack. The Obama Administration did not warn New York City officials, supposedly for security reasons. Sounds reasonable, until you realize Obama wasn’t on board. It was a photo op. Cost $328,835, according to the Air Force.

Today we will examine how Obama plans to protect Americans from “greedy capitalism” by further restricting our freedoms. The man who in four months has spent or committed more money than was spent by all prior presidents combined, has decided how to fix our financial problems. (I know that sounds sarcastic, but I assure you that my comments are offered with all the respect due to Mr. Obama.)

By the way, in a preface to these announcements, Obama assured Americans that in developing the rules he had worked hard to find a middle ground between the benefits and excesses of capitalism. Excuse me? What excesses is he talking about? The excesses that have made us the most generous nation in the world? Perhaps he was referring to the excesses that have caused us to spend trillions defending freedom around the world. Or maybe it is the excessive spending on the United Nations, where we pay for more than half the budget of an organization that is hostile to us (See LINK below about UN Corruption). Or the International Monetary Fund (IMF) where we also provide well over half the money that is loaned to poor nations.

The “New World Order” regulations Obama announced Wednesday included: 1) A massive expansion of powers for the Federal Reserve System.
2) A new “Council of Regulators” 3) A new Consumer Financial Protection Agency 4) Requirements for more capital and increased liquidity for financial institutions

POWER TO THE FED. The authority that he gave to the Fed should have been given to the SEC, according to lawmakers, industry officials and even bureaucrats. The SEC has experience as a regulator. And the Federal Reserve System is not even a federal agency, so it should not be given regulatory authority. (See the LINK below to my article, “The Non-Federal Fed.”) The short version is that the Fed is an organization of private American and European banks. The US government has little or no control over this private organization. Yet it controls our money supply, our interest rates, our very financial well-being. Yet Obama gives even more power to this far-too-powerful group of banks. Why? More on this later.

COUNCIL OF REGULATORS. Little seems to be known about this new group, other than it will be chaired by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the tax cheat who (as head of the New York Fed) brokered the disastrous deal with AIG that cost American taxpayers $180 Billion (See LINK below to “It Was All a Smokescreen”). So far we know that it will “talk about emerging risks” and send an annual report to Congress. Just what we need. More bureaucrats talking. Since federal regulators caused most of the financial woes the US has experienced, the idea of a bunch of regulators forming a “Council” does not inspire confidence.

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION AGENCY. Because it takes over duties already being done by many of the other hundreds of federal agencies, and because its powers overlap with those of dozens of others, this is destined to create confusion. Businesses who already comply with rules of existing agencies will spend millions of dollars on lawyers trying to figure out what the new rules are and which agencies with conflicting rules they actually have to bow down to.

CAPITAL AND LIQUIDITY REQUIREMENTS. This is the only one that seems to make sense. The requirements that banks and mortgage companies have had to meet in these areas have been far too lax. The frankly shocking video of a House hearing (see LINK below) shows Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines defending the mortgage agency’s reserves being below required limits (which were already far lower than the requirements for similar institutions). His reply was “These assets are so riskless, that their reserves should be under 2%.” Democrats on the committee cursed at the federal regulator who brought the violations to light, and said that the questioning of Raines was a “lynching.” Of course both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac failed, causing the mortgage crisis that resulted in the overall credit crisis that gripped our nation last year. My only problem with the requirements is that they will be set by Obama political appointees who will answer only to him – not to elected officials whom taxpayers can call to task.

You might ask regarding these new regulations, “What’s in it for me?” That’s easy to answer: 1) The higher costs to the financial institutions will be passed on to you.
2) It will be even harder to borrow money.
3) Inflation, already a very serious problem, will be accelerated.
4) You will have fewer choices as the government consolidates financial institutions. Reduced competition means higher costs to the consumer.

Obama’s choice of timing for announcing these reforms was interesting, to say the least. He wanted to be able to say that the stock market responded positively to his announcements. If it did not, he wanted to have something else to blame besides his new draconian regulations. So he chose Quadruple Witching Week.

Without going into a lot of technical detail, the events which occur on the Friday of this week only happen four times each year. Stock Options, Index Options, Index Futures and Single Stock Futures all expire on the third Friday of March, June, September and December (nicknamed “Freaky Friday” because the markets are usually very volatile). The market will usually be way up or way down, but will seldom be tranquil during these four weeks each year. But for the last 10 years, the market has gone up 77% of the time during Quadruple Witching Week.

So Obama was pretty sure the market would be up, and he could claim that meant that Wall Street approved of his antics. And if it was down, he could claim that it had nothing to do with his announcements; it was just the abnormal activity normally associated with all those expirations. It was actually pretty clever. He could have his cake, and eat it, too.

But no one familiar with market internals was fooled. Wall Street hates excessive regulation, tax increases, and Obama. And Wednesday’s market action proved that. Here are some headlines from after the close:

“Standard and Poors Lowers Ratings on Multiple Banks, Citing Increased Ops. Costs” Translation: The ratings agency lowered ratings on banks because the new regulations will increase their costs of operations.

“Stocks Fall, Mostly on Bank Ratings” Translation: It was a down day, but bank stocks were hit the worst.

“Financial Stocks Down 2.6%; S&P 500 Down .14%” Translation: Financial stocks, which will “benefit” most from Obama’s meddling with free markets, were down 18 ½ times as much as the general market.

Obama has been consistently moving toward centralization of financial institutions. For example, the Chairman of Wells Fargo, in a closed-door session with government officials, was forced to take federal loans. When the bank’s Chairman told the government the bank didn’t need the money, they told him he had to take the money; that if he didn’t need it, he could “use it to buy smaller banks.” He was also told to keep the meeting private, but he had the courage and patriotism to hold a press conference and expose what had happened.

Why would Obama and Company care about whether big financial institutions gobble up smaller ones? (It’s not just in banking. Brokerage firms and insurance companies are devouring one another as well.) The answer is very simple. Obama wants a very few, very large financial institutions to survive. It is much easier for a government to take over a few very large institutions with centralized operations, than to attempt to control thousands of smaller institutions spread all over the nation.

The most significant aspect of this story was that these new regulations fit perfectly with Obama’s announced intentions to “coordinate” our financial market’s regulations with those of foreign nations. Obama’s apparent goal is to weaken the US economy to the point where we will be grateful for international regulation and an international currency. Wednesday’s announcements put us one step closer to the one world currency that China has been pushing, and that the Obama Administration has encouraged. You can guess what will follow a one world currency.

History has shown said that it is much less costly to control a nation by taking over its money than by using military power. Look what has happened to the European Union nations that substituted the Euro for their own currency. Now that the EU controls their money supply, their interest rates, and their very financial well-being (sound familiar?), even though they are technically sovereign nations, they are in reality serfs of the EU. The European Parliament can overrule their laws. And the EU Supreme Court can override each nation’s high courts.

Do you think it can’t happen here? Washington has openly discussed a “North American” currency that would be used by Mexico, the United States and Canada. Like the Euro, it would be optional – until it became mandatory. The next step would be the North American Union, the groundwork for which has already been laid by the NAFTA treaty, which removed many of the protections we once had for our national sovereignty.

If certain powerful people (who want to become much more powerful) have their way, some form of the Soviet Union will re-emerge and Asian countries will form something similar to the EU. The Arabs are pretty well united by the Arab League. The only real nuisance would be Israel, which (if the US becomes neutralized by a North American Union) can simply be destroyed by the Arabs. Finally, the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, China and India, which comprise 42% of the world’s population) have been forming strategic and economic alliances since 2002. Just this week at a summit of their leaders in Russia, they issued a declaration calling for the establishment of a “multipolar World Order.”

In the final chapter, these various unions will be united in a One World Government.

Does all this sound kind of scary? Don’t worry. I cheated. I looked at the end of the Book. God wins.

Dr. Tom Barrett
Conservative Truth (Publisher, Editor)

Biography - Dr. Tom Barrett

Dr. Tom Barrett has been an ordained minister for 30 years. He has written for local and national publications for most of his life, and has authored several non-fiction books. He has been interviewed on many TV and radio programs, and speaks at seminars nationwide. Tom is the editor and publisher of Conservative Truth, an email newsletter read by over fifty thousand weekly which focuses on moral and political issues from a Biblical viewpoint.

Tom is Publisher and Editor of ConservativeTruth.org.