The Snowy Hydro SouthCare Helicopter Base will open its hangar doors and welcome the community behind the scenes to learn more about this life-changing Service while enjoying free or gold coin activities, displays, live entertainment and refreshment. Snowy Hydro SouthCare Base Open Day is an annual and free to enter event and is sponsored this year by Robbo’s Motorcycles.

Base Open Day 2009 will feature emergency vehicles from all of the ACT’s Emergency Services as well as ACT Policing and Kenny Koala not to mention our own Bell 412 rescue helicopter. Families will also enjoy the FARM petting paddock, air-brush face-painting and tattooing, Harley Davidson rides, helicopter joy flights, classic Holdens and Fords, a jumping castle and much, much more. Inside the hangar will be the Snowy Hydro SouthCare display, raffle and merchandise sales plus aviation related displays, models and activities for the littlies.

Enjoy a barbecue or some pancakes with a cold drink in the shade while listening to the wonderful music of the Canberra City Band, Sing Australia Choir, Canberra City Pipes and Drums and Elvis. Most activities are either free or gold coin so bring the kids, a pocket full of change and enjoy this wonderful day out for all of the family while supporting the Snowy Hydro SouthCare Helicopter Service.

For more information log onto our website www.snowyhydrosouthcare.com.au 

or email info@snowyhydrosouthcare.com.au

Two diverse films

By Rama Gaind

ADAPTED from a stage drama by playwright/screenwriter/director John Patrick Shanley, Doubt is set in a working-class Catholic parish and parochial school in New York City in 1964.
Meryl Streep plays the strict Sister Aloysius Beauvier, Mother Superior at a Catholic school in the Bronx, who suspects improper behaviour by Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) towards a 12-year-old student, Donald Miller (Joseph Foster II).
Miller is the school’s only African-American student and altar boy.
It is Sister James (Amy Adams), a young, inexprienced teacher, who observes the closeness between the boy and Father Flynn.
The film’s overall success is due to the fine acting by the cast – particularly Streep, Hoffman and Adams – and the remarkable ascetic cinematography by Roger Deakins.
CLEVER performances by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, who play disgraced former US President Richard Nixon and British TV host David Frost, unfold in the lightweight film Frost/Nixon directed by Ron Howard.
Talking about Nixon’s time in office and the Watergate scandal, the two met for four historic interviews in 1977.
Howard’s entertaining adaptation of a play by Peter Morgan is an enlightening reflection on compelling political events.

“The Eurobodalla Walking Together Group was formed in 1993 from a Reconciliation Council Study Circle and acts as a support group for social justice in the Eurobodalla community.
From the start there have been indigenous and non-indigenous members and meetings and other functions have been held in co-operation with one of the local aboriginal land councils as well as at the Eurobodalla Shire Council and other indoor sites and at camping and picnic sites.
The group has also been the local focus for Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) and for the Sorry Day and the Journey of Healing.
On 3 June 2000 a Bridge Walk in Moruya was organized in which more than one thousand supporters participated.
The Sea of Hands has been installed at Batemans Bay, Moruya, Narooma and Bermagui.
Monthly meetings and special events have focussed on topics of key importance in attaining social justice and reconciliation in the community.
The group has collaborated with and receives on-going support from the Shire Council which flies the Koori flag daily from a specially-installed flagpole.
Members have taken part in many activities supporting social justice including as invited observers at Yuin Elders Council Conferences, the Round Australia Sea of Hands Tour, and as participants in Corroboree 2000.”
For more information please contact:
Georgina Parsons
Phone: 02 4474 2321, 02 4474 3123
Address: 11 Woodbridge Avenue Moruya NSW 2537

“The Eurobodalla Walking Together Group was formed in 1993 from a Reconciliation Council Study Circle and acts as a support group for social justice in the Eurobodalla community.
From the start there have been indigenous and non-indigenous members and meetings and other functions have been held in co-operation with one of the local aboriginal land councils as well as at the Eurobodalla Shire Council and other indoor sites and at camping and picnic sites.
The group has also been the local focus for Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) and for the Sorry Day and the Journey of Healing.
On 3 June 2000 a Bridge Walk in Moruya was organized in which more than one thousand supporters participated.
The Sea of Hands has been installed at Batemans Bay, Moruya, Narooma and Bermagui.
Monthly meetings and special events have focussed on topics of key importance in attaining social justice and reconciliation in the community.
The group has collaborated with and receives on-going support from the Shire Council which flies the Koori flag daily from a specially-installed flagpole.
Members have taken part in many activities supporting social justice including as invited observers at Yuin Elders Council Conferences, the Round Australia Sea of Hands Tour, and as participants in Corroboree 2000.”
For more information please contact:
Georgina Parsons
Phone: 02 4474 2321, 02 4474 3123
Address: 11 Woodbridge Avenue Moruya NSW 2537

The Nina Vox debut album is a collection of Torch, Tangos, Bossa and Blues titled The Shape of You.

Standouts include the title track written by acclaimed Australian songwriter Tony King and covers of The Very Thought of You and Don McLean’s poignant Vincent.

Under Bill Risby’s arrangement, some of Australia’s finest musicians joined forces on the album including George Washingmachine on violin, Paul Furniss on sax and clarinet, Hamish Stuart on drums, Brett Hirst on double bass, Tony King on guitar and Fabian Hevia on percussion..

The Shape of You is an eclectic mix, from Tom Waits’ A Little Drop of Poison and Temptation to Don McLean’s Vincent to Duke Ellington’s Solitude, Leonard Cohen’s Dance Me to the End of Love, Consuelo Velazquez’s Besame Mucho and King’s originals The Shape of You and So Sue Me.

Purchase the CD for $27.50 at www.ninavox.com.
 

Animated selection

By Rama Gaind

STORYTELLING at its best, Bolt is a Disney 3-D animated adventure which sees a cute canine with special powers who stars on a weekly television series, but thinks he’s really a superhero.
Voiced by John Travolta, Bolt works alongside his owner Penny (Miley Cyrus) to save the world from the evil Dr Calico (Malcolm McDowell).
A series of accidents sets him loose on the real world and he embarks from New York on a journey back to Hollywood, aided by a cynical alley cat named Mittens (voiced by Susie Essman). When they find themselves in a park begging for food they meet a TV-addicted hamster named Rhino (brilliantly voiced by a Disney animator named Mark Walton).
The hamster recognises Bolt from his show and convinces the pair to let him join them on their travels.
While each twist and turn of this animated road adventure might be predictable, the action sequences are well created, graphic detail is spot-on and the story’s quick tempo make for enjoyable viewing.
THAT lovable group of escaped New York City Zoo animals in the original, return for an animated, musical tale in the colourful Madagascar – Escape 2 Africa.
A bungled escape from Madagascar lands them on the plains of Africa where the opportunity is rife for most of them to meet their relatives.
Ben Stiller is the voice of Alex the lion, David Schwimmer is Melman the giraffe, Chris Rock is Marty the zebra and Jada Pinkett Smith is Gloria the hippo.
This will be a treat for the young ones.
TALE of Despereaux is one animated film that appears to be overly cluttered, but it features a surplus of celebrity voices: Matthew Broderick, Robbie Coltrane, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Jenkins, Emma Watson and Tracey Ullman.
It tells the story of a brave and courteous mouse who befriends a human princess.
Borrowing from other celluloid works including Ratatouille and Flushed Away are obvious traits.

BRIDE WARS erupt when best friends Emma (Anne Hathaway) and Liv (Kate Hudson) find out that both their weddings have been accidentally booked on the same day. Both had dreamt of getting married at New York’s Plaza Hotel ever since they were children. Now they can’t attend each other’s wedding.
Neither is willing to change the date and get to the stage when they refuse to talk to each other. As a result, they go to great lengths to sabotage the other’s wedding.
Even the wedding planner Marion St. Claire (Candice Bergen) is unable to get the girls to make up.
Even though the general mayhem could so easily have been avoided, the storyline lacks selling power.
A LUKEWARM, badly directed fantasy-comedy, Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler leaves a lot to be desired.
As Skeeter, Sandler is a hotel handyman whose life changes after he becomes babysitter to his niece and nephew. The bedtime stories he tells them begin to magically come true, but it takes him a while to realise that it’s the children who actually dictate the outcome.
Even though Sandler adopts his usual tactics which includes making immature jokes, there’s nothing special about his acting. However, Russell Brand, who plays his dim-witted friend, shows more promise.

Global Research, January 16, 2009

The upcoming Financial Stimulus package courtesy of the new Economic dream team has left numerous economists and analysts quaking in their boots. We are seeing predictions of hyperinflation, the destruction of the dollar, the flight of U.S. creditors, the prospect of widespread civil unrest and a descent in to a Greater Depression.

Small business owners have stood up and discredited the tax incentives that were meant to convince them to ignore market reality and open the door to new employees. The measures that supposedly address the enormous foreclosure problem seem to change from day to day and only work to the advantage of the banks. Obama and Bush have just signed off on an additional $20 Billion in cash and $118 Billion in asset guarantees for Bank of America which already received $25 Billion last year and is now choking on Merrill Lynch’s losses. The President Elect and his new Stimulus Czars are not paying attention and are proceeding to continue the same destructive formula adopted by Paulson.

The media bombardment is in overdrive to convince the public that herein lies the path to salvation. First we had the guarantee that three million jobs would be created out of thin air only to be bumped up to four million. These are nice round media friendly numbers which have no basis in reality. With each passing day the sands are shifting on exactly how the money will be spent.

Ben Bernancke’ s speech at the London School of Economics on January 13, confirmed that the emphasis has now shifted to bailing out the banks one more time by buying more toxic assets to clean up their collapsing balance sheets. After seeing $8.2 Trillion vanish in to Insurance, Banking and a moribund auto industry with absolutely no concrete result except for the tightening of credit, the increasing losses of Big Banking and the GM chairman having to queue for his airline ticket, the Fed, backed by Obama, continues to beat the dead horse.

The scariest aspect of this is the speed at which this 18 wheeler disaster is being driven toward the rabbits in the headlights. We haven’t yet seen any senators or reps being threatened with the imposition of martial law, but we have seen Obama treathen to veto his own fellow democrats if they do not rubber stamp the proposals he has been instructed to deliver. Nobody has even taken a vote yet and already the gloves are off. Bailout Bill One and the Patriot Act were pushed just as hard.

The only legislation that gets the hard sell seems to involve either stealing the taxpayer’s money or their rights. Judging by his actions so far, Obama has done absolutely nothing but continue the transfer of wealth from the American taxpayer to his Wall St. campaign contributors.

There has been absolutely zero positive impact on the real economy as the increasingly horrific indicators continue to mount and the prospect of an unprecedented Depression continues to rise over the horizon. Economic reality was left on the back burner and the capital that could have paid for Obama’s fantastical “stimulus” plan 5 times over has been wasted on the imploding financial sector, who no doubt will be back for more

Andrew Hughes is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Andrew Hughes

Winners of the 2009 Golden Globes
By Rama Gaind

IT was no surprise when Australia’s Heath Ledger was honoured posthumously with a Golden Globe, but the shock of winning two awards astonished Kate Winslet at the 66th Golden Globe Awards ceremony on January 11.
However, accolades were heaped on Danny Boyle’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ which won four awards including best drama and best director. ‘Slumdog’ has now emerged as the potential film to beat at the Academy Awards next month.
This is an unpredicted situation for a film with a cast of unknowns and a story set among orphans and criminals on the streets of Mumbai. Not only that, but central to that is the story of an orphan boy who grows up through hardships, reunites with his childhood sweetheart and becomes a champion on India’s version of ‘Who Wants to Be A Millionaire’.
Proving to be a solid box-office success, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ was favoured over best-drama nominees that included Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio’s ‘Revolutionary Road, Ron Howard’s ‘Frost/Nixon’ and Brad Pitt’s ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’.
Tying for the lead with five nominations – ‘Frost/Nixon’, ‘Benjamin Button’ and Meryl Streep’s ‘Doubt’ – went away with nothing.
Woody Allen’s Spanish romance ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ won for best musical or comedy film.
Winslet, previously nominated five times without winning at both the Globes and Oscars, won for her role as a woman in a crumbling marriage in ‘Revolutionary Road’, which was directed by her husband Sam Mendes, and as a former Nazi concentration camp guard in ‘The Reader’.
British actress Sally Hawkins was chosen best actress in a comedy or musical as an eternal optimist in ‘Happy-Go-Lucky’. Among the stars Hawkins beat was Streep, who had a nomination for musical or comedy actress for ‘Mamma Mia!’
Colin Farrell took the comedy or musical actor prize as a hit man in ‘In Bruges’ and Mickey Rourke returned from the wilderness to earn the Globe for best dramatic actor in ‘The Wrestler’ which also won the best-song Globe for Bruce Springsteen, who wrote the film’s title tune.
Heath Ledger won the prize for his role as the Joker in the Batman blockbuster ‘The Dark Knight’.

Global Research, January 11, 2009
webofdebt.com

Letter to the bank – Dear Sirs, In light of recent developments, when you returned my check marked “insufficient funds,” were you referring to my funds or yours?

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith famously said, “The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled.” If banks can create money, why are we suffering from a “credit crunch”? Why can’t banks create all the money they can find borrowers for? Last fall, Congress committed an unprecedented $700 billion in taxpayer money to reversing the credit crisis, and the Federal Reserve has already fanned that into $8.5 trillion in loans and commitments.1 But the bank bailout has proven to be no more than a boondoggle for a handful of lucky Wall Street banks, without getting credit flowing again.

To understand the real cause of the credit crisis and how it can be reversed, we first need to understand credit itself – what it is, where it comes from, and what the real tourniquet is that has limited its flow. Banks actually create credit; and if private banks can do it, so could public banks or public treasuries. The crisis is not one of “liquidity” but of “solvency.” It has been caused, not by the banks’ inability to get credit (something they can create with accounting entries), but by their inability to meet the capital requirement imposed by the Bank for International Settlements, the private foreign head of the international banking system. That inability, in turn, has been caused by the derivatives virus; and only a few big banks are seriously infected with it. By bailing out these big banks, the government is actually spreading the virus by furnishing the funds for them to take over smaller regional banks.

A more effective alternative than trying to patch up the hopelessly imperiled derivatives positions of these few Wall Street banks would be to simply create another credit system with a pristine set of books. We don’t need to fix the Wall Street disease; we can bypass the whole problem and create a new, healthy, parallel system. A network of public banks (federal and state) could create “credit” just as private banks do now.

This credit could be extended at low interest rates to consumers and at very low interest to local governments, drastically reducing the cost of public projects by reducing the cost of funding them.
That is not a radical proposal. It is what private banks themselves do every day. But bankers will dispute it, and most people have trouble believing it. So to make a compelling case for this solution, the first thing that needs to be established is that . . .

Banks Create the Money They Lend
Bankers will tell you that they do not create money. At a 10% reserve requirement, they simply lend out 90% of their deposits. The catch is that their “deposits” include the money they have written into their customers’ accounts as loans. That is how loans are made: numbers are simply written into the accounts of borrowers, as many reputable authorities have attested. Here are two of them, dating back to when officials were either more aware of what was going on or more open about it:

“[W]hen a bank makes a loan, it simply adds to the borrower’s deposit account in the bank by the amount of the loan. The money is not taken from anyone else’s deposit; it was not previously paid in to the bank by anyone. It’s new money, created by the bank for the use of the borrower.”

– Robert B. Anderson, Treasury Secretary under Eisenhower, in an interview
reported in the August 31, 1959 issue of U.S. News and World Report

“Do private banks issue money today? Yes. Although banks no longer have the right to issue bank notes, they can create money in the form of bank deposits when they lend money to businesses, or buy securities. . . . The important thing to remember is that when banks lend money they don’t necessarily take it from anyone else to lend. Thus they ‘create’ it.”

– Congressman Wright Patman, Money Facts (House Committee on Banking and Currency, 1964)

The process by which banks create money was detailed in a revealing booklet put out by the Chicago Federal Reserve titled Modern Money Mechanics.2 The booklet was periodically revised until 1992, when it had reached 50 pages long. It is written in somewhat difficult prose, but here are a few relevant passages:

“The actual process of money creation takes place primarily in banks.” [p3]

Translation: banks create money.
“In the absence of legal reserve requirements, banks can build up deposits by increasing loans and investments so long as they keep enough currency on hand to redeem whatever amounts the holders of deposits want to convert into currency.” [p3]

Translation: banks can create as much money as they want by writing loans into their borrowers’ accounts, limited only by (a) legal reserve requirements (money that must be held in reserve – traditionally about 10% of outstanding deposits and loans) or (b) the amount of money they will need to keep on hand to pay any depositors who might come for their money (also traditionally about 10%).

“Banks may increase the balances in their reserve accounts by depositing checks and proceeds from electronic funds transfers as well as currency.” [p4]

Translation: the “reserves” that count toward the reserve requirement include currency, deposited checks, and electronic funds transfers. (Note that the “deposits” created as loans are excluded from this list of allowable reserves: the bank cannot just keep bootstrapping loans on top of loans but must have money from external sources backing up its liabilities equal to about 10% of its loans and deposits.)

“The money-creation process takes place principally through transaction accounts [accounts that can be drawn on without restriction].” [p2]

” With a uniform 10 percent reserve requirement, a $1 increase in reserves would support $10 of additional transaction accounts.” [p49]

Translation: $1 deposited by a customer can be fanned into $10 in loans.

“In the real world, a bank’s lending is not normally constrained by the amount of excess reserves it has at any given moment. Rather, loans are made, or not made, depending on the bank’s credit policies and its expectations about its ability to obtain the funds necessary to pay its customers’ checks and maintain required reserves in a timely fashion.”

Translation: In practice, banks issue loans without worrying too much about whether they have the reserves to cover them. If they come up short, they can just borrow them:

“[Since] the individual bank does not know today precisely what its reserve position will be at the time the proceeds of today’s loans are paid out. . . . many banks turn to the money market – borrowing funds to cover deficits or lending temporary surpluses.” [p50]

“[A] bank may [also] borrow reserves temporarily from its Reserve Bank. . . .
[However], banks are discouraged from borrowing [Reserve Bank] adjustment credit too frequently or for extended time periods.” [p29]

Translation: If the bank finds at the end of the accounting period that its reserves do not come to the required 10% of its outstanding loans and deposits, it can simply borrow the reserves it needs from the money market or its Federal Reserve Bank.

A 2002 article posted on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York noted that today, few banks are constrained by reserve requirements at all: “Since the beginning of the last decade, required reserve balances have fallen dramatically. The decline stems in part from regulatory action: the Federal Reserve eliminated reserve requirements on large time deposits in 1990 and lowered the requirements on transaction accounts in 1992. But a far more important source of the decline in required reserves has been the growth of sweep accounts.

In the most common form of sweeping, funds in bank customers’ retail checking accounts are shifted overnight into savings accounts exempt from reserve requirements and then returned to customers’ checking accounts the next business day. Largely as a result of this practice, today only 30 percent of banks are bound by a reserve balance requirement.”3 Even without official reserve requirements, however, banks must keep enough money on hand to meet withdrawals or checks written against the accounts of their depositors; and that generally means about 10% of outstanding deposits and loans, as moneylenders discovered centuries ago. But if the banks come up short, they can borrow this money from the money market or the Federal Reserve; and if the Fed comes up short, it can create new reserves.4

So why the current credit crunch? What is limiting bank lending? One answer is that borrowers are simply “tapped out” and not in a position to take out as many loans as they used to. When housing and the stock market crashed, consumers no longer had home or stock equity to borrow against.5 But to the extent that the blockage is with the banks themselves, it is not caused by the reserve requirement. Something else is putting the squeeze on credit . . . .

The Real Tourniquet:
Capital Adequacy and the Mark-to-Market Rule
What actually constrains bank lending is the capital adequacy requirement, something that is imposed not by our own central bank but by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Called “the central bankers’ central bank,” the BIS pulls the strings of the private international banking system from Basel, Switzerland.

How the capital requirement is determined is even more complicated than the reserve requirement, but it needs to be understood to understand why banks with the power to create money are going bankrupt. So here is a simplified version. A bank’s “capital” consists of its assets minus its liabilities. Under the capital adequacy rule imposed by the Basel Accords, assets are “risk-weighted,” with some being considered riskier than others. Ordinary loans have a “risk weighting” of 1. The capital adequacy rule requires that the ratio of a bank’s capital to its assets with a risk-weighting of 1 be at least 8%.

That means the bank must have $8 in capital for every $100 in ordinary loans. Federal bonds have a risk-weighting of zero: they are considered to be as safe as dollars and don’t need any extra capital backing them. Mortgage loans (which are secured by real estate) have a risk weighting of .5. That means they need only $4 of capital per $100 of loans. Other bank exposures given risk weightings include such things as derivatives and foreign exchange contracts.6 (Interestingly, the $700 billion committed by Congress to bailing out the financial system is approximately 8% of the $8.5 trillion the Fed has now promised in loans and commitments. Even the Federal Reserve evidently feels constrained by the BIS capital requirement.)

A very controversial accounting rule imposed on banks for their capital ratio calculations is the “mark to market” rule. This rule requires banks to revalue all of their assets each day as if the assets had to be sold that day. Capital calculations thus fluctuate with the market; and in today’s volatile market, all asset classes have plunged at the same time. Since assets get marked to market but liabilities don’t, a bank may suddenly find that its assets are insufficient to support its liabilities, rendering it insolvent and unable to make new loans. Banks have gotten around the capital adequacy requirement by reducing risk on their balance sheets with a form of private bet known as “derivatives.” At least, they thought they had gotten around the rule. But this unregulated form of insurance proved to be based on faulty mathematical models. (See Ellen Brown, “”Credit Default Swaps: Derivative Disaster Du Jour,” and “It’s the Derivatives, Stupid!,” www.webofdebt.com/articles.)

“Credit default swaps” (CDS) are a form of derivative widely sold as insurance against default. When AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, ventured into CDS in the late 1990s, the presumption was that “housing always goes up” and that the risk of default was so remote that selling “credit protection” was virtually “free money”.7 But this free money turned into a serious liability to the protection sellers when the “remote” actually happened and a flood of defaults struck. The value of the derivatives protecting securitized mortgages became so questionable that they were unmarketable at any price. Banks counting them as assets on their books then had to “mark them to market” effectively at zero, reducing the banks’ capital below the levels called for in the Basel Accords and rendering the banks officially insolvent.

When AIG went broke in September 2008, banks heavily involved in derivatives faced double jeopardy: not only would they have to write down the derivative protection they had sold to others and counted as assets on their books, but they could no longer count on the derivative insurance they had bought to minimize the risk of default on their other assets. AIG got a massive bailout from the Fed in return for most of its equity, but even that bailout money is not expected to be enough to get it out of its derivative nightmare and keep it afloat.

Derivatives have introduced a lack of transparency into bank portfolios, creating fear and uncertainty on the part of lenders, depositors and investors alike. This uncertainty has prevented banks from raising capital by selling stock, or meeting reserve requirements by getting interbank loans; and it has discouraged investors from investing in the money market. Banks don’t know whether the money they lend to each other will be repaid, since they don’t have a clear view of the value of the assets carried on bank balance sheets. The result is a crisis of confidence: the players are all eying each other suspiciously and holding their cards close to the chest.

Going Local
Fortunately, according to a recent study using the Treasury Department’s own data, the banking crisis is not widespread but is limited to only “a few big, vocal banks.”8 The real credit problem lies with the financial institutions with significant derivative exposure, and most of this liability is carried by only a handful of Wall Street giants. In early 2008, outstanding derivatives on the books of U.S. banks exceeded $180 trillion. However, $90 trillion of this was carried on the books of JPMorgan Chase alone, while Citibank and Bank of America each had $38 trillion on their books.9 Needless to say, these are also the banks that are first in line for the Treasury’s bailout money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

Rather than excising the relatively contained derivative tumor, the Treasury and the Fed are feeding it with trillions in taxpayer money; and this money is being used, not to unfreeze credit by making loans, but to buy up smaller banks.10 That means the derivative cancer, rather than being excised, is liable to spread. We the people and our representatives in Congress have allowed Wall Street to call the shots because we think we are dependent on their credit system, but we aren’t. There are other ways to get credit — ways that are fair, efficient, transparent, and don’t encourage greed. Public credit could be generated by a system of public banks.

Precedent for this solution is to be found in the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which has been generating credit for North Dakota since 1919, keeping the state fiscally sound when other states are floundering. (See Ellen Brown, “Sustainable Government: Banking for a ‘New’ New Deal,” webofdebt.com/articles, December 8, 2008.) The credit crunch could be avoided by “going local” not just in the United States but around the world. Countries that have been seduced or coerced into funneling their productive assets into serving foreign markets and foreign investors could become self-sustaining, using their own credit and their own resources to feed and serve their own people. There is much more to be said on this subject, but it will be saved for future articles. Stay tuned.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

Notes
1. Kathleen Pender, “Government Bailout Hits $8.5 Trillion,” San Francisco Chronicle (November 26, 2008).
2.Modern Money Mechanics: A Workbook on Bank Reserves and Deposit Expansion (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Public Information Service, 1992, available at http://www.rayservers.com/images/ModernMoneyMechanics.pdf.
3.Paul Bennett, Savros Peristiani, “Are Reserve Requirements Still Binding?”, Economic Policy Review (May 2002).
4.Modern Money Mechanics, op. cit.
5. Joshua Holland, “Was the ‘Credit Crunch’ a Myth Used to Sell a Trillion-Dollar Scam?”, AlterNet (December 29, 2008).
6.”Capital Requirement,” Wikipedia.
7.Robert O’Harrow Jr., Brady Dennis, “Complex Deals Led to AIG’s Undoing,” Los Angeles Times (January 1, 2009).
8.J. Holland, op. cit.
9.Comptroller of the Currency, “OCC’s Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities Third Quarter 2008,” www.occ.treas.gov; “US Bank Derivative Exposure,” FDIC/IRA Bank Monitor, chart reproduced on The Big Picture (blog), August 2008.
10. Joe Nocera, “So When Will Banks Give Loans?”, New York Times (October 25, 2008).

Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown

by Jeremy Lee

“We have before us the greatest question that has yet been submitted for our consideration. It involves Australia’s national supremacy in finance, and the peace, good government and prosperity of generations yet unborn….” — King O’Malley M.H.R. speaking on the need for the Commonwealth Bank as a ‘peoples’ bank’, House of Representatives, September 1909.

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up round the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.…” —Thomas Jefferson, former US President, 1802

The Prime Minister of the UK, Mr. Gordon Brown, in an article in the Washington Post, (Friday October 17, 2008) advocated that “The Financial Crisis is also an Opportunity to Create new Rules for Our Global Economy.” There it is! Now out in the open! President Bush’s swan song in mid-November will be to host a Global Conference (150 nations) to establish a World Money System! There’ll be plenty of dire warnings about the consequences if we fail to take this last chance for humanity!

WHICH WAY FOR RUDD?

Prime Minister Rudd, and his Treasurer Wayne Swan, will naturally be there. Statements they have made so far indicate that they also favour a globally-enforced solution; but perhaps this is being unfair. Surely they are aware of the prolonged and dramatic history of their own party – the A.L.P. – in seeking to defend Australia’s financial and economic sovereignty? Would the same Party which founded the Commonwealth Bank after Federation end up sacrificing our Nation’s sovereignty to a New World Order 100 years later?

FISHER SETS THE SCENE

The Fisher Labor Government in 1910, at the instigation of Tasmanian Member King O’Malley, founded the Commonwealth as a “peoples’ bank”. Almost immediately it showed its value and potential. Among other items, it funded expenditure on World War 1 to the tune of $700 million at an interest rate of five-eights of one percent! Sir Dennison Miller, the single Director of the Bank, claimed shortly after the war that his bank had the capacity, not only to finance the war all over again had it been needed, but that it could save Australia untold millions in peacetime projects as well.

As King O’Malley had foretold, the need for foreign borrowing and compounding debt had been averted for future generations.

THE ‘BANKSTERS’ MOVE IN

By 1924 disaster struck! A young Dennison Miller unexpectedly died. A federal election saw Lord Bruce, a London banker, become a Liberal Prime Minister. The Commonwealth Bank was put under a Board selected from the private world of finance, and was increasingly crippled from there on. The Great Depression, which struck five years later, could have been averted had the Commonwealth still been a “peoples’ bank”. There were no physical shortages in Australia. The causes were financial, as they are now.

MANY REMEMBER …

Five years after the Depression started, with untold misery and unemployment up to 27 per cent at one point, a young Labor candidate stood for Fremantle in the federal election – John Curtin. A traditional Labor man, he was destined to become a great wartime leader. Curtin’s election platform was to return the Commonwealth Bank to its original position – as the “peoples’ bank”. His platform said:

“…Legislation will be passed restoring the management to a Governor of the Bank, as was originally the case when it was established by the Fisher government. Outside control by private interests will thus be removed and the bank will function in the public interest only. The progress made under Sir Dennison Miller, without interference by directors from outside, justifies the restoration of similar control…. The main purpose of securing national control of banking and credit is to utilize the credit of the nation for the benefit of the people ….”

TURMOIL AND CONFUSION

Arguments about the causes of Depression waxed and waned during the thirties. The faulty concept that it was due to “too much money chasing too few goods”, gained credence among orthodox economists, resulting in the Premiers’ Plan, whereby wages were cut by 10 percent. This increased public misery. Finally, in 1937 a Royal Commission was held into Banking, where it was conceded that the Commonwealth Bank had the constitutional authority to create and lend money on any terms it considered necessary including the waiving of repayments and interest! Had the outbreak of war not occurred a short time later, it is almost certain that genuine reform of the financial system would have occurred. It only remains to say that the Depression disappeared in three days, once unlimited finance was made available for war!

THE SUBTLE NEW IDEA

As the post-war period of peace occurred a new change overtook the Labor Party. Ben Chifley was the last genuine working Prime Minister. By the time Whitlam came to power in 1972 the Fabian dream of internationalism as outlined by Marx’s Socialist International took hold. The remnants of the traditional working man’s Labor Party were steadily weeded out. By the time Hawke, and then Keating, came to power the Fabian takeover was all but complete. Keating himself sold the Commonwealth Bank which Old Labor had striven so hard to establish.

Its biggest single shareholders – as with the other three of the Big Four – are Listed nominees of New York. Australia’s financial policies were shaped far away, in the lavish halls of the International Monetary Fund and the OECD. The creation of credit became a private banking monopoly. Only the growth of marvelous technical, industrial and electronic innovation held at bay the final onslaught of ‘debt slavery’. It has now caught up with a vengeance.

BAILING OUT THE BANKS

With scant knowledge of Australia’s financial history, and intoxicated with the idea that the New World Order is the only way to go, Australia’s politicians are now assuring us that banker-driven globalism is the solution. To reach this solution the perpetrators of the world-wide crisis must be ‘bailed out” with the peoples’ money, so they can resume their debt-creation business. Once handed over to a New World Order regime there is no turning back.

Australia’s national sovereignty is gone forever. Surely there must be a few – even one or two – politicians, no matter what party, who will speak out now for Australia’s own constitutional authority and integrity; for the people rather than the banks; for our farmers, manufacturers and workers, who have been the grist through the mill.

THE REAL AUSTRALIA

The real Australia was described by a World Bank Survey of over 150 nations in 1995 as “the richest per capita nation in the world.” But only a portion of the Australian people see that wealth. Ten per cent – 2 million people – live in poverty. Many are now being dispossessed. Debt has robbed the people of what truly belongs to them. Can this be reversed before it is too late?

The most URGENT task is to prevent our weak-kneed Parliament from surrendering to the seduction of the New World Order. If this can be done, we can then examine how to return to Australians the benefits, robbed by the banks, to which they are rightfully due.

Global Research Articles by Jeremy Lee