Billions in Recent Yememi Investments and The Underwear Bomber’s Daddy

Scott Creighton
American Everyman
January 4, 2010

Did Daddy Warbucks sell Little Orphan Umar to the CIA?

Why are we attacking the people of Yemen? Because some kid is alleged to have sewn a big fire-cracker into his underwear then sat on it in a plane over Detroit? Nope. Not even close. If you want to know what this is all about, follow Daddy’s money all the way to the IMF and Jaiz Bank.

Correct me if I am wrong, but didn’t brave soldiers used to throw themselves on grenades back in the day to absorb the shock and therefore save their fellow soldiers. Isn’t there a saying about “throwing yourself on a grenade” to that end? So the big “terrorist” plot here is to get a small amount of PETN onboard a plane and then SIT ON IT, thus absorbing the relatively small explosion… with his ass and his 150lb body?

That’s the “plan” that requires, as President Obama blusters, “every element of national power” to fight? I don’t think so. You gotta look a little closer than a singed pair of tightie-whities if you want to know why President Obama is going to kill more people in Yemen. I have. Take a look.

The other day I wrote about President Obama’s attempt to assassinate a witness in Yemen as well as the IMF and World Bank connections related to that nation as the probable reason the US feels compelled to invade. The premise was, that with all the free-market “reforms” being forced on the people of Yemen by these privately owned international banking institutions, the poor of that nation were rising up against the corrupt government and it looks like without our help, there will be a regime change. I wrote about the involvement of the Kuwait Energy company and their connections with the World Bank as it relates to the multiple ongoing oil and LNG pipelines running throughout the country. Basically, I estimated based on information from the websites and publications from the World Bank, IMF, and Kuwait Energy websites that there was about a quarter of a billion dollars at stake and that it was that money that was the reason President Obama chose to attack the people of Yemen.

Once again, Obama and his adminstration are serving the banks interests first.

Well, hold onto your hats folks… I was wrong. Yes, you heard that right. Scott Creighton (willyloman) is admitting he was wrong. My research was incomplete and I missed the mark by quite a bit.

Instead of having a quarter of a billion dollars of foreign investment on the line… it’s more like 5 billion dollars.

Yemen’s foreign debt has increased from $8.9 million to $5.9 billion since July 2009, according to the report on banking and currency developments issued by the Yemen Central Bank.

The IFC’s institutions topped Yemen creditors, with Yemen owing them about $3 billion, including $2.2 billion for the International Development Foundation.

The rest of the debt was for the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development, the International Fund for Agriculture Development IFAD, the Islamic Development Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the OPEC and the EU.

Yemen’s debt for the Paris Club Members came second by about $1.8 billion, with $1.3 billion in Russian loans.

Many outstanding loans come from Japanese, U.S., French, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Dutch and German sources.

The country’s debt for other creditors came in the third place with Yemen owing Saudi, Kuwaiti, Chinese, Algerian, Korean, Polish and Iraqi funds about $836 million. The debt for unidentified sources reached $195.7 million by July. YOB Sept. 2009

Since July of 2009, money has been pouring into Yemen fast and furious; money that may never be recovered were there to be a revolution and subsequent regime change in that nation. President Obama can’t allow that to happen. But how is he going to go to the American people and tell them that foreign investors and international banks are worried about their billions in investments in the “reforms” of Yemen’s socioeconomic system? That wouldn’t be an easy sell to a post TARP Bill nation now would it?

Enter Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and his ridiculous “underwear bomb”.

Now, all this time after the terrorist attack on Flight 253 (and I will call it that because whether it was done by one “lone gunman” or the state, it’s still an attempt to effect change through the use of fear so it is terrorism) what do we really know about Abdulmutallab? Well, we have been told by an agency that has lied to us many, many times that he has “confessed” to the attack because he was “radicalized” and that he received help from terrorists in Yemen. All too convenient of a story isn’t it? Billions on the line in Yemen, Obama tries to assassinated a guy there killing scores of innocent people instead, and ALL OF A SUDDEN we have this guy coming out of the woodwork with his silly “underwear bomb”.

After scouring though all his emails (I told you they keep every single comment and email forever) the only “radical” thing the media can say about him… is he’s lonely. Imaging that; a lonely student.

Well, what isn’t the MSM and President Obama telling you about Abdulmutallab that is relevant to the story? Let me fill in some blanks.

1. The Underwear Bomber’s IMF and World Bank indebted Father

Abdulmutallab’s father is indeed a banker just as the MSM has said. The interesting thing is, he’s not JUST a banker, he is THE banker in Nigeria. According to a recent Times story, Abdulmutallab’s father, Umaru Mutallab is one of the wealthiest men in Africa; that says a lot in a continent as corrupt as Africa.

In Nigeria, the nation Umaru Mutallab lives in, according to the World Bank, 53% of the population lives on less than $1 per day. Abject poverty is rampant in Nigeria and so are human rights violations. Kinda has to be that way to keep the super wealthy in control of the population.

On February 25, police killed approximately 50 persons, burned nearly 100 homes, and destroyed more than 150 market stalls in Ogaminana, just outside Okene, Adavi local government area, Kogi State.

On November 27, in Jos, ethno-religious violence erupted during the vote tabulation for the Jos North Local Government Area elections resulting in the deaths of approximately 300 persons. Credible reports indicate the police and military used lethal force during attempts to quell the violence, killing approximately 100 civilians.

Police officers were not held accountable for excessive or deadly force or for the deaths of persons in custody. Police generally operated with impunity in the apprehension, illegal detention, and sometimes execution of criminal suspects. 2008 US State Deptment Report on Human Rights Violations in Nigeria

How did Abdulmutallab’s father become so wealthy in the first place? Umaru Mutallab was the Nigerian Minister of Economic Development in 1975. He then spent a decade as the Managing Director and CEO of United Bank for Africa. For the last ten years, Umaru has been the chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria.

So, Abdulmutallab’s father was instrumental through his government position in facilitating the World Bank and IMF’s entrance into the Nigerian economic system. He then goes on to head up several banks making himself filthy rich while the vast majority of Nigeria is impoverished to unprecedented degrees all the time and kept in check by ruthless police and military oppression.

That’s the “underwear bomber’s” “banker” father; a corrupt Nigerian banker with excessive connections to the IMF and the World Bank and who OWES everything he has to them.

So far what we know about Daddy Warbucks is this; he went to the State Department (U.S. Embassy) and then he went to the CIA offices in Nigeria supposedly to “warn” them about his “radicalized” son. Yet, no emails or web comments appear to make Abdulmutallab look very radical. So why was Daddy Warbucks with his deep IMF and World Bank connections really meeting with the State Department (US Embassy) and CIA? Why is it that after the supposed “warnings” Abdulmutallab was STILL able to get on that flight with all the warning signs and red flags? Hmm?

When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s father in Nigeria reported concern over his son’s “radicalization” to the U.S. Embassy there last month (Nov. 19th), intelligence officials in the United States deemed the information insufficient to pursue. Washington Post

Abdulmutallab’s father Alhaji Uma Abdulmutallab, a prominent banker, was said to have had one face-to-face meeting with a CIA official in Nigeria (just 5 weeks ago) and several contacts by telephone. Telegraph

2. The Underwear Bombers Mother

Abdulmutallab’s mother isn’t talked about much. Ever wonder why that is? Well, I’ll tell you; it’s because she is from Yemen. That’s right. Yes, Abdulmutallab went to Yemen. But is it possible he went to visit his mother or other relatives there and NOT “al-Qaeda” operatives? It’s hard to figure out, because everything about his mother is being scrubbed up on the net. Very little is being said about her and who she is. But this much I know, she is from Yemen and may live there, or may not. I will continue looking into it.

Now, here is what we have learned;

• Yemen increased its national debt to the tune of 5 billion dollars from July to September of this year (they may have borrowed more since Sept). The IMF, World Bank, and Paris Club members are on the hook for that money if the revolution in Yemen is successful.

• A World Bank and IMF indebted super wealthy “free-market” reformer in Nigeria goes to the State Department and then to the CIA in Nigeria to talk about his son.

• That same son, for reasons unknown decides “out of the blue” to sit on a small amount of explosives in a plane in Detroit. The CIA somehow misses the warning signs.

• The FBI announces immediately that the son “confessed’ that it was all Yemen’s fault.

• After the attack, all the banking controlled congressmen and the Obama administration announce we will attack “the terrorists” in Yemen and thus help “stabilize” the current corrupt government of that nation.

Now, one more thing… this one is funny actually that no one else caught it.

Daddy Warbucks, Umaru Mutallab (remember, one of the wealthiest men in Africa, banker extraordinaire) played a major role in introducing Islamic banking into Nigeria. Islamic Banking is represented and organized globally by what is called the Islamic Development Bank which is deeply involved with Nigeria now (thanks in part to Umaru Mutallab) mainly through a bank called Jaiz Bank.

Umaru Mutallab sits on the board of Jaiz Bank and is in fact it’s chairman.

This year, however, should see the launch of Nigeria’s first Islamic bank. A holding company called Jaiz International, has been set up in the country to launch what will eventually be called Jaiz Bank International. It is being supported in its endeavours by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), which is helping to ensure that the launch of Jaiz is a success and that the bank complies with international banking regulations and Nigerian laws. All Business 2007

Well look at that. Jaiz Bank, headed up by the “underwear bombers’ father is in fact supported financially by the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

Now remember what I first put up in this article, the IDB is also heavily invested in the neoliberal reforms of Yemen’s economy which are at this very moment, under serious risk of the ongoing revolution in that country.

Daddy Warbucks, whose banking ties are under threat of serious set-backs, goes to the State Department and then the CIA and all of a sudden his lonely, college drop-out, populist son, ends up getting on a flight and setting his nuts on fire and the good-old U.S. of A can now come running in to the rescue to save all those precious investments in Yemen that are directly tied to, you guessed it, the underwear bomber’s daddy. A small world, ain’t it?

I hope that clears things up a little bit.

Either that or they just “hate us for our freedom”. Take your pick.

———-

“Billions in Recent Yememi Investments and The Underwear Bomber’s Daddy. It’s a Small World Ain’t It?” is the 1st part of my “Understanding the Panty Bomber Mythology” series

Part 1 – Billions in Recent Yememi Investments and The Underwear Bomber’s Daddy. It’s a Small World Ain’t It?

Part 2 – Operation Scorched Earth and the Underwear Bomber

Part 3 – Dancing With Snakes

Research related links

1. Man Videotaped Underwear Bomber On Flight 253
2. Tarpley On RT: Foiled Underwear Bomber is Intelligence Patsy
3. ‘Underwear Bomber’s’ Alarming Last Phone Call
4. Kean Says Underwear Bomber “Did Us a Favor”
5. Gibbs: Don’t Disagree With Obama On Response to Underwear Bomber
6. Corporate Media Claims Underwear Bomber Connected to al-Qaeda
7. Underwear Bomber False Flag to be Exploited to Renew Draconian Patriot Act
8. Underwear Bomber Dazed, Stared “Into Nothing”
9. Ron Paul: Yemen, Underwear Bomber, and Loss of Liberty
10. 9/11 Commission Chairman: Plane Bomber “Did Us A Favor”
11. Government Allowed Plane Bomber to Attempt Attack
12. Top Democrat suggests suspected bomber complicates Gitmo plan

Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisor

Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions

The Observer, Sunday 13 December 2009

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

"That was the moment [last year] when the system was basically paralysed because of the unwillingness of banks to lend money to one another. The progressive liquidisation to the system and the progressive improvement by some banks of their share values [has meant that] the problem [of illegal money] has become much less serious than it was," he said.

The IMF estimated that large US and European banks lost more than $1tn on toxic assets and from bad loans from January 2007 to September 2009 and more than 200 mortgage lenders went bankrupt. Many major institutions either failed, were acquired under duress, or were subject to government takeover.

Gangs are now believed to make most of their profits from the drugs trade and are estimated to be worth £352bn, the UN says. They have traditionally kept proceeds in cash or moved it offshore to hide it from the authorities. It is understood that evidence that drug money has flowed into banks came from officials in Britain, Switzerland, Italy and the US.

British bankers would want to see any evidence that Costa has to back his claims. A British Bankers' Association spokesman said: "We have not been party to any regulatory dialogue that would support a theory of this kind. There was clearly a lack of liquidity in the system and to a large degree this was filled by the intervention of central banks."

EU/IMF Revolt: Greece, Iceland, Latvia May Lead the Way

Ellen Brown
Web of Debt
December 22, 2009

Europe’s small, debt-strapped countries could follow the lead of Argentina and simply walk away from their debts. That would shift the burden to the creditor countries, which could solve the problem merely by a change in accounting rules.

Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International Monetary Fund is imposing its “austerity measures” on the outer circle of the European Union, with Greece, Iceland and Latvia the hardest hit. But these are not your ordinary third world debtor supplicants. Historically, Iceland was settled by the Vikings, who successfully invaded Britain; Latvian tribes repulsed even the Vikings; and the Greeks conquered the whole Persian empire. If anyone can stand up to the IMF, these stalwart European warriors can.

Dozens of countries have defaulted on their debts in recent decades, the most recent being Dubai, which declared a debt moratorium on November 26, 2009. If the once lavishly-rich Arab emirate can default, more desperate countries can; and when the alternative is to destroy the local economy, it is hard to argue that they shouldn’t. That is particularly true when the creditors are largely responsible for the debtor’s troubles, and there are good grounds for arguing the debts are not owed. Greece’s troubles originated when low interest rates that were inappropriate for Greece were maintained to rescue Germany from an economic slump. And Iceland and Latvia have been saddled with responsibility for private obligations to which they were not parties. Economist Michael Hudson writes:

Read entire article

Research related links

1. Greece, Ireland May Leave Euro
2. Britain: the New Iceland
3. Address On Iceland &The IMF, Debt Moratorium, And Tobin Tax
4. Iceland Political Leader Calls For Debt Moratorium As Government Crumbles
5. Latvia’s government collapses
6. A near-riot and parliament besieged: Iceland boiling mad at credit crunch
7. Greece To Enforce Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccinations
8. CIA Preparing To Install Military Government In Greece?
9. Greece: We did not prepare for Iran war
10. General strike adds to protest woes in Greece
11. Failure to save East Europe will lead to worldwide meltdown
12. Bilderbergers to Meet in Greece

The IMF Collects Debts on Behalf of the World's Largest Banks

Make Iceland pay for Incompetent British Bank Deregulation by Michael Hudson

Global Research, May 11, 2009 Last month the G-20 authorized the International Monetary Fund to increase its loan resources to $1 trillion. It’s not hard to see why. Weakening currencies in the post-Soviet states threaten to raise default rates on foreign-currency mortgages as collapse of the Baltic real estate bubble drags down Swedish banks, while the Hungarian property plunge threatens Austrian banks. It seems reasonable to infer that creditor-nation banks hope to be bailed out. The IMF is expected to lend the Baltic, central European and other debtor-country governments money to pay them. These hapless debtor economies are then to follow IMF “conditionalities” to squeeze enough money out of their populations to pay foreign creditors – and repay the Fund by imposing yet more onerous taxes on their labor and industry, making them even more high-cost and therefore pushing them even further into trade and credit dependency. This is why there have been so many riots recently in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Ukraine, as was the case for so many decades throughout the Latin American countries that introduced the term “IMF riot” to the global vocabulary.              For fifty years the IMF has organized such payouts to creditor nations. Loans are made to debtor-country governments to “promote exchange-rate and price stability.” In practice this means pouring tens of billions of dollars into currency markets to make bad gambles against raiders. This is supposed to avert the beggar-my-neighbor nationalism and financial protectionism that aggravated depression in the 1930s. But the practical effect of IMF lending is to demand that debtor countries impose onerous IMF “conditionalities” that stifle their domestic markets. This is why the IMF was left with almost no customers until last year’s debt crisis deranged the world’s foreign exchange markets.              It is supposed to be merely incidental that the largest IMF shareholders, the United States and Britain, happen to be the major creditor nations and their banks the main beneficiaries of IMF loans. But in a Parliamentary question-and-answer session on May 6, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown spilled the beans. Under pressure for his notorious “light-touch regulation” as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1997-2007), he undid half a century of rhetorical pretense by announcing that he was pressuring the IMF to bail out Britain in its nasty dispute with the Icelandic owners of a British bank that went under. He was in a position to know the nitty-gritty of who owed what and which nation’s monetary authorities were responsible for which banks. So when he said that he was strong-arming the IMF and other organizations to force Iceland’s government to pay for his own government’s mistakes, he must have known this was breaking the unwritten law of pretending that the IMF is not the servant of creditor nations in bilateral disputes with smaller economies.         Gordon Brown spills the beans on the IMF  Here’s the background. Mr. Brown and his New Labour predecessor Tony Blair have saddled British taxpayers with a generation of payments to pay for their decade of deregulating London’s financial sector. Bad mortgage lending led to the failure first of Northern Rock and then the Royal Bank of Scotland, whose ambitious junk-mortgage program had made it the world’s largest bank. At $3.8 trillion before it collapsed, it was nearly twice the size of Britain’s $2.1 trillion gross domestic product (GDP). (For a review of New Labour’s deregulatory policies see Philip Augar, Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City's Golden Decade [2009].) So one can understand why Mr. Brown was flailing around to blame someone for New Labour’s “Don’t see, don’t ask” policy.              Last autumn one of Iceland’s most reckless banks, Landsbanki, announced that it had made so many bad gambles that its loans and investments could not cover what it owed its depositors. It had drawn many deposits from abroad by setting up foreign branches, including Icesave in Britain. And in a striking variation from normal practice, these branches were not incorporated as separate affiliates, which would have led them to be regulated by local British authorities. As branches of the Icelandic head office, Icesave was regulated only by Icelandic authorities – which were as thoroughly neoliberalized as those of Britain, and didn’t really have a clue as to what was going on.               When Icesave went broke in October, British monetary authorities panicked. Mr. Brown sought above all to prevent its owner, Landsbanki, from doing what Lehman Brothers had just done on Sept. 14 when its New York office emptied out the funds in the account of its London affiliate just before the U.S. firm declared bankruptcy. Trying to grab whatever Icelandic assets he could, Mr. Brown overreacted (hardly a new experience for him). Responding far beyond Icesave itself, he resorted to anti-terrorist legislation passed in 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attack on New York’s World Trade Center to freeze Icesave’s accounts – and also those of other banks in Britain owned by Iceland. Evidently he thought that classifying his peaceful NATO partner as a terrorist economy would panic its government into paying. But the effect was to cause a run on Iceland’s currency, making payment impossible. The króna entered a period of freefall on foreign exchange markets.          Mr. Brown’s bellicose behavior escalated as Britain’s own currency sank. This set the stage for his explosion last Wednesday when he explained how he intended to make Iceland pay, not only for Icesave but also for Kaupthing S&F, for which the British authorities were responsible in the case of depositors who had lost money. Unlike the unfortunate IceSave (administered as a branch of Iceland’s Landsbanki and hence subject to Icelandic regulatory authority), Kaupthing S&F is incorporated as a distinct British affiliate, and regulated and insured as such. The UK authorities accordingly have not claimed that Iceland’s government has any obligations to reimburse British depositors who have lost money. Yet when asked about the “£6 million that the Christie hospital [in Manchester] stands to lose in the Icelandic bank Kaupthing,” central banker Brown pretended that Kaupthing was not a British bank overseen by domestic deposit insurance authorities. “The fact is that we are not the regulatory authority and that many, many more people had finances in institutions regulated by the Icelandic authorities,” he insisted before Parliament. “The first responsibility is for the Icelandic authorities to pay up, which is why we are in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and other organisations about the rate at which Iceland can repay the losses that they are responsible for.”              This naturally has prompted Icelanders to ask British authorities just which “other institutions” they may be talking to, and what they may be hoping to gain. The IMF’s representative in Iceland, Franek Rozwadowski, was quick to explain to the Icelandic newspaper Fréttablaðið that it was not the IMF’s role to intervene in “a bilateral matter that needs to be resolved bilaterally.” But fears remain that Iceland’s government will be pressured to squeeze out money from the economy to reimburse foreign speculators on the winning end of the many bad gambles that Iceland’s banks made before being de-privatized.  Such fears are aggravated by the worry that Mr. Brown may have found help from a fifth column within Iceland itself. After the bank crisis last autumn, the Independence Party fell, and its coalition partner for the last six years, the Social Democrats, took charge of the administration. The government divided the failed Icelandic banks into “good” and “bad” parts so as to save what could be salvaged for Icelandic depositors to back their deposits (the “good” bank). The government then commissioned two British accounting firms to survey the loan portfolios of Landsbanki and Kaupthing to evaluate their assets at “fair value.” But much as the U.S. stress test surrendered to the banking system’s insistence on blue-sky optimism regarding what will be left over on high-risk loans and gambles, so the Icelandic contract defined “fair value” as it would exist if the global financial collapse was completely reversed and everything went back to normal as if nothing had happened. Under this assumption the good and bad bank assets would be worth much more than is the case under today’s real-world conditions. This dangerously over-states the net worth of Iceland’s failed banks. It was dangerous to retain firms closely associated with major clients – and hence, their source of future business – that include the parties with whom Iceland’s government stands in a potential adversarial relationship. Another problem is political pressure for a cover-up on the part of the vested Icelandic interests that had engaged in reckless behavior, and perhaps crooked self-dealing via foreign transactions.  In any event, the report was not made public on its scheduled date in mid-April, which was supposed to be just prior to the national elections on April 25. When a report on major bankruptcy by political insiders is not released on the promised date before a major election, one naturally suspects political pressure at work. Yet despite the financial crisis that plunged most Icelanders into a debt-strapped condition, the election turned mainly on political factors. The Social Democrats advocated joining the European Union and adopting the euro, hoping that this in itself may lead to domestic economic reform. The Left-Green coalition opposed giving up Icelandic political and economic sovereignty and pressed for domestic reform, as did the centrist Progressive Party. As for the Independence Party, it was swamped by one scandal after another concerning election financing, insider crony dealing and the usual array of dirty neoliberal political practices. All this occurred in an economy structured to be a creditor paradise – that is, a debtor’s hell. On top of normal mortgage interest, Icelandic personal and real estate debts are subject to indexation of the principal to reflect the consumer price index – which in turn mirrors the fall in the króna’s exchange rate, about 20% over the past year. This means that if someone bought a house for the equivalent of $100,000 a year ago with a 100% mortgage, the debt would now have risen to $120,000. But the collapse of Iceland’s economy has sent unemployment soaring and business crashing, so real estate prices have fallen by about 25%. The former $100,000 house would now have a market value of only $75,000 – just 62% of its re-indexed $120,000 mortgage, some $45,000 in negative equity. The situation actually is about to get much worse in the near future. The US$ is currently at 125 krónur (IKR), down from 62 at yearend-2007 – a 100% increase. (For the euro, the increase over the same period is 85%.) Iceland’s banks have linked many business loans, as well as auto loans and other debts to a market basket of foreign currencies, on the logic that they themselves have had to obtain money by borrowing yen, euros, sterling or dollars. Although these loans are denominated in krónur, their payment is indexed, so the effect is similar to denominating loans in foreign currency. Many loans are still benefiting from the moratorium placed on re-indexing the principal when the crisis hit last autumn, but many loans are about to be reset. Icelandic debtors who borrowed in the belief that the IKR was as stable as the dollar are now paying the price for their optimism – an optimism fed by the banks’ marketing departments, which depicted these indexing arrangements simply as an accounting formality! Business debts are especially at risk. This shows how urgently Iceland needs to straighten out its banking mess and restructure the economy to free the population from the unique debt squeeze its laws and a decade of neoliberal mismanagement have created. Now that the banks have been de-privatized and taken back into the public domain, credit needs to be turned back into what it was before – a public utility. But this cannot be organized without knowing how much can be recovered from the failed banks to back domestic depositors. And the reports from the British accounting consultancy firms still have not been made public. Only the major creditors have received copies!  Remarkably, the government said last week that they might not be released at all. The inference is that the crooked dealing has been so damning to vested Icelandic interests that it would cause a new political crisis to resolve the deepening economic crisis. The fear is that a sweetheart deal has been made with the kleptocrats whose reckless behavior (and it seems probable, illegitimate bank maneuverings with offshore accounts) plunged the economy into negative equity in the first place. The better the financial health of the failed banks appears on paper, the more presumably will be left over to pay foreigners – including the offshore accounts of the banks’ former owners in their own dealings with the banks. So from the vantage point of Icelandic depositors and debtors to these banks, a realistic pessimistic estimate of the banks’ position would protect them, while an unrealistic optimism would enable foreigners to siphon off much more money, leaving less for Iceland.  In fact, the IMF has failed to oblige Iceland’s government to conform to the Letter of Intent it signed on November 15, 2008. This letter obliged Iceland to “bring loan values in line with expected market values” (#4), and to “include an assessment of whether or not managers and major shareholders have mismanaged or abused the banks” (#6). No such assessment has been made, and as described above, loan values are exceeding market values by a rising degree as property, businesses and households fall into negative equity status. The Icelandic government’s agreement with the IMF promised to make the bank assessments public upon their completion “by end-march 2009” (#10). This has not been done – perhaps (one worries) because the next sentence says that the government “will discuss in advance with IMF staff any changes to the adopted strategy.” In view of the secrecy that now shrouds the events that pushed the banks under, one can only wonder at what developments have prompted the government and IMF to change strategy.  What the IMF did demand – as it always does – is that once the government bails out the bankers for their bad loans, the whole privatization process is to start all over again, paving the groundwork for yet new rip-offs. In view of the fact that “the banking crisis will significantly constrain the public sector and burden the public for years to come” as the government pays off bad loans (#12), the agreement pledges (#14) that “A significant reduction in government debt through the sale of the government’s stake in the new banks could help reduce the needed fiscal adjustment over the medium term.”  Belatedly, the population is now up in arms – two weeks after the election! To stabilize the currency, Iceland has agreed to IMF conditionalities that prevent the government from pursuing the counter-cyclical Keynesian fiscal policy that Mr. Obama is leading in the United States. Unless the debt pressure is alleviated, Icelandic homeowners and businesses will be obliged to run down their savings each month until they are depleted – at which time they will lose their homes and forfeit their businesses to foreclosing creditors.  So on Saturday afternoon, May 9, a “pots and pans” protest was conducted outside of Iceland’s Parliament in Reykjavik. The scenario is much like that of the color revolutions staged by U.S. neoliberals throughout the post-Soviet states. But Iceland’s kitchen-utensil revolution is organized as a protest against neoliberal policies. The protesters have picked up the thread where it left off last October a similar set of protests dislodged the Independence Party from power. The National Labor Association has broken from the new Social Democratic coalition government, reflecting the growing anger among Icelanders at their debt squeeze.  Mr. Brown’s statement that he intends to use IMF leverage to deepen Iceland’s debt position by forcing its government to bail out British depositors has rubbed salt in this wound – precisely by demanding for his country what Icelanders are not receiving from their government! Its citizens want to know what pressure the country is responding to if it intends to put the interest of foreigners before their own. This double standard has motivated the population to act in a more confrontational way than would have occurred had the problem been merely domestic. Icelanders want to be told the magnitude of the financial problem – and apparent dishonesty and crony dealings – that the government is keeping secret. The answer may at long last move Iceland out of its post-feudal oligarchy. Its neoliberal privatizations and pro-financial policies may turn out not to be as entrenched and irreversible as the kleptocrats had hoped would be the case. Michael Hudson is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Michael Hudson

Washington Post Highlights Agenda For 'Bank Of The World'

But if you talk about it, it's still a conspiracy theory

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, April 20, 2009

The Washington Post today carries a revealing article that highlights the ongoing agenda to forge a "new economic world order" with a vastly empowered IMF acting as a 'bank of the world'.

Under the headline A Bigger, Bolder Role Is Imagined For the IMF - 
Changes Suggest Shift in How Global Economy Is Run, Anthony Faiola describes how the IMF is on course to be transformed into "a veritable United Nations for the global economy."

Faiola envisages a scenario where "central bankers and finance ministers would meet to convene a financial security council of sorts."

"Serving almost as ambassadors to the IMF, they would debate ways to put out the world's economic fires and stifle reckless policies before they ignite new ones." he continues.

"Bowing to a new economic world order, the IMF would grant fresh powers to the likes of China, India and Brazil. It would have vastly expanded authority to act as a global banker to governments rich and poor. And with more flexibility to effectively print its own money, it would have the ability to inject liquidity into global markets in a way once limited to major central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve"

The article then explains that this imagined scenario is taken directly from internal IMF documents, interviews and think-tank reports. The details were thrashed out at the recent G20 summit, and though they may take years to fully implement, this model represents the global financial elite's blueprint for the near future.

The IMF will discuss it's role in the new world order at it's biannual assembly in Washington this weekend.

The Post article essentially describes the ongoing agenda to empower a group of unelected central bankers with the authority to usurp state sovereignty by overseeing benchmarks for national financial governance and setting regulations for financial institutions all over the globe.

The Post's description echoes that of World Bank President and Bilderberg elitist Robert Zoellick, who earlier this month openly spoke of using the economic crisis to give global financial bodies the power to regulate national policy as part of the larger creation of global government.

“If leaders are serious about creating new global responsibilities or governance, let them start by modernising multilateralism to empower the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank Group to monitor national policies.” Zoellick stated.

Of course, The Washington Post can openly announce this, as can every other major media outlet in the world. However if you or I discuss it, it is still dismissed as a "conspiracy theory" by the unwitting majority of the population.

As we have previously reported, both the IMF and the United Nations have thrown their weight behind proposals to implement a de-facto global financial dictatorship. Both bodies have expressed support for new world reserve currency system to replace the dollar as part of the acceleration towards a new economic world order.

Earlier this month after the G20 summit, the London Telegraph's international business editor also highlighted the agenda, noting that under a clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders, the IMF's power to create money outside the control of any sovereign body was activated.

The new reserve currency would be formed from Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), a synthetic paper currency issued by the IMF that has lain dormant for half a century.

"The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity." Ambrose Evans-Pritchard wrote.

As we have repeatedly warned, the introduction of a new global currency system, with an overarching regulatory body, is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer unaccountable hands.

The G20 moves the world a step closer to a global currency

The world is a step closer to a global currency, backed by a global central bank, running monetary policy for all humanity.

 

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Last Updated: 2:06PM BST 03 Apr 2009

A single clause in Point 19 of the communiqué issued by the G20 leaders amounts to revolution in the global financial order.

"We have agreed to support a general SDR allocation which will inject $250bn (£170bn) into the world economy and increase global liquidity," it said. SDRs are Special Drawing Rights, a synthetic paper currency issued by the International Monetary Fund that has lain dormant for half a century.

 

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In effect, the G20 leaders have activated the IMF's power to create money and begin global "quantitative easing". In doing so, they are putting a de facto world currency into play. It is outside the control of any sovereign body. Conspiracy theorists will love it.

It has been a good summit for the IMF. Its fighting fund for crises is to be tripled overnight to $750bn. This is real money.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director, said in February that the world was "already in Depression" and risked a slide into social disorder and military conflict unless political leaders resorted to massive stimulus.

He has not won everything he wanted. The spending plan was fudged. While Gordon Brown talked of $5 trillion in global stimulus by 2010, this is mostly made up of packages already under way.

But Mr Strauss-Kahn at least has resources fit for his own task. He will need them. The IMF is already bailing out Pakistan, Iceland, Latvia, Hungary, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia, Bosnia and Romania. This week Mexico became the first G20 state to ask for help. It has secured a precautionary credit line of $47bn.

Gordon Brown said it took 15 years for the world to grasp the nettle after Great Crash in 1929. "This time I think people will agree that it has been different," he said.

President Barack Obama was less dramatic. "I think we did OK," he said. Bretton Woods in 1944 was a simpler affair. "Just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy, that's an easy negotiation, but that's not the world we live in."

There will be $250bn in trade finance to kick-start shipping after lenders cut back on Letters of Credit after September's heart attack in the banking system. Global trade volumes fell at annual rate of 41pc from November to January, according to Holland's CPB institute – the steepest peacetime fall on record.

Euphoria swept emerging markets yesterday as the first reports of the IMF boost circulated. Investors now know that countries like Mexico can arrange a credit facility able to cope with major shocks – and do so on supportive terms, rather than the hair-shirt deflation policies of the old IMF. Fear is receding again.

The Russians had hoped their idea to develop SDRs as a full reserve currency to challenge the dollar would make its way on to the agenda, but at least they got a foot in the door.

There is now a world currency in waiting. In time, SDRs are likely evolve into a parking place for the foreign holdings of central banks, led by the People's Bank of China. Beijing's moves this week to offer $95bn in yuan currency swaps to developing economies show how fast China aims to break dollar dependence.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the summit had achieved more than he ever thought possible, and praised Gordon Brown for pursuing the collective interest as host rather than defending "Anglo-Saxon" interests. This has a double-edged ring, for it suggests that Mr Brown may have traded pockets of the British financial industry to satisfy Franco-German demands. The creation of a Financial Stability Board looks like the first step towards a global financial regulator. The devil is in the details.

Hedge funds deemed "systemically important" will come under draconian restraints. How this is enforced will determine whether Mayfair's hedge-fund industry – 80pc of all European funds are there – will continue to flourish.

It seems that hedge funds have been designated for ritual sacrifice, even though they played no more than a cameo role in the genesis of this crisis. It was not they who took on extreme debt leverage: it was the banks – up to 30 times in the US and nearer 60 times for some in Europe that used off-books "conduits" to increase their bets. The market process itself is sorting this out in any case – brutally – forcing banks to wind down their leverage. The problem right now is that this is happening too fast.

But to the extent that this G20 accord makes it impossible for the "shadow banking" to resurrect itself in the next inevitable cycle of risk appetite, it may prevent another disaster of this kind.

The key phrase is "new rules aimed at avoiding excessive leverage and forcing banks to put more money aside during good times." This is more or less what the authorities agreed after the Depression. Complacency chipped away at the rules as the decades passed. It is the human condition, and we can't change that.

(original article)

UN & IMF Back Agenda For Global Financial Dictatorship

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, March 27, 2009

Both the IMF and the United Nations have thrown their weight behind proposals to implement a new world reserve currency system to replace the dollar as part of the acceleration towards a global financial dictatorship, in the same week that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told CFR globalists that he was “open” to the idea.

As we reported yesterday, Timothy Geithner initially renounced a Chinese and Russian proposal to supplant the dollar with a new global currency, but he later told CFR elitists, who have consistently lobbied for a global currency as part of a wider agenda for global government, that he was “open” to the idea. Indeed, before Geithner was appointed by Obama when he was still president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he argued for a new global central banking system shortly after attending the 2008 Bilderberg meeting.

Now the U.N. and the IMF have thrown their weight behind the move and reports indicate that the matter will be a major point of discussion at the upcoming G20 conference, with officials having initially dismissed speculation that a global currency would be on the agenda.

“A UN panel of expert economists pressed Thursday for a new global currency reserve scheme to replace the volatile, dollar-based system and for coordinated steps by rich countries to stimulate their economies,” reports AFP.

“A new Global Reserve System — what may be viewed as a greatly expanded SDR (Special Drawing Rights), with regular or cyclically adjusted emissions calibrated to the size of reserve accumulations, could contribute to global stability, economic strength and global equity,” the panel said.

In addition, “IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said that talks on a new global reserve currency to replace the US dollar were “legitimate” and could take place “in the coming months,” according to the report.

As we have repeatedly warned, the introduction of a new global currency system is a key cornerstone in the move towards global government, centralized control and more power being concentrated into fewer hands.

The swift and ruthless exploitation of the economic meltdown on behalf of globalists and central banks who caused the problem in the first place revolves around their drive for a global monetary union, which is a directive coming from the very inner core of the CFR and the Bilderberg Group.

The Federal Reserve is already is a private organization and as such unaccountable to the American people. A global central bank, which is effectively what a new global reserve currency system will create, will establish a de facto financial dictatorship which will wield power over the economies of every country on the planet with no accountability whatsoever.

The ruling elite resolved long ago to force a global currency down our throats. In fact, a global currency is at the very core of their plan to dominate the world. Control money and you control the destiny of states, you eliminate national sovereignty. “The control of money and credit strikes at the very heart of national sovereignty,” A.W. Clausen, president of Bank of America once observed.

As Georgetown professor and CFR historian Carroll Quigley noted, the goal of the banking families and their minions consists of “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… 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.”

In 2007, Robert Mundell, “the father of the euro,” noted that “international monetary reform usually becomes possible only in response to a felt need and the threat of a global crisis.”

That very crisis arrived shortly after, providing the elite with the perfect opportunity to ram through a massive program of financial centralization by posing as the saviors - when they created the problem in the first place.

The very actions of the elite will continue to worsen the financial crisis, providing the necessary political capital for them to institute what they had planned all along - a new global currency for the global government that they plan to implement thereafter.

Research related links

1. G20 To Begin Implementation Of Global Financial Dictatorship
2. Bachmann Bill Would Ban Global Currency
3. China Voices Support For New Global Currency To Replace Dollar
4. Global Financial Regulatory Body on the Way?
5. Globalists Exploit Financial Meltdown In Move Towards One World Currency
6. Calls For New Global Financial Order Increase
7. Bilderberg Seeks Bank Centralization Agenda
8. Geithner: U.S. “quite open” to global currency
9. CNBC Analyst: Global Bank, Global Currency Within 15 Years
10. A New World Financial Order
11. Banker Giveaway Goes Global
12. Financial Times Editorial Admits Agenda For Dictatorial World Government

New World Order

By JUSTIN FOX Thursday, Feb. 05, 2009

Illustration by Harry Campbell for TIME

ENLARGE +

In recent weeks, the world has been politely standing by and watching how things play out with the fiscal stimulus and latest bank-bailout plans in Washington. Yes, there's been some grumbling overseas about "buy American" provisions in the stimulus bill, but for the most part, officials elsewhere don't want to step on the toes of a new President to whom they are favorably disposed. They also don't want to endanger legislation that they hope will help jump-start the global economy.

Just wait a couple of months, though. Politicians from Beijing to Berlin to Brasília see the current crisis as the product of a messed-up global financial infrastructure dominated by the U.S., and they will soon be pushing for big changes--whether Americans like them or not.

All this will begin to gel on April 2, when the newish international organization known as the G-20--the leaders of 19 of the world's biggest national economies, plus the European Union--meets in London. An unofficial meeting has already taken place, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where G-20 officials (with the conspicuous exception of those from the U.S.) made speeches, conversed in the halls and gave a sense of the direction in which the world outside the U.S. wants to head. (Read TIME's special report on Davos 2009.)

The global discussion of the financial crisis is strikingly different from the one in the U.S. Here there's still something of a debate over whether the mess is the result of too much government interference in the housing market or too little government regulation of financial markets. In the rest of the world, that's no debate: inadequate and inconsistent financial regulation is uniformly blamed. What's more, a consensus seems to have emerged among the world's finance ministers and central-bank bosses that the chief underlying cause of the crisis was an unbalanced and out-of-control system of global capital flows in which some big-spender countries (namely the U.S.) ran up huge debts while big savers (China and India, for example) hoarded surpluses.

On the regulatory front, the path to a new global approach is pretty clear. Last spring the leaders of the G-7, a club of wealthy nations, agreed to create a "college of supervisors" to more closely coordinate regulation of multinational banks. The Group of Thirty, an influential organization of current and former central bankers and financial regulators, recommended in January that "systematically significant" financial institutions (those that are too big to fail) be identified in advance and subjected to higher capital requirements and tougher regulation. (See who's to blame for the financial crisis.)

Yet regulators around the world were already jointly setting bank-capital standards before the current crisis hit. A lot of good that did us. So there is also much talk about the need for a new architecture--"a new Bretton Woods" was a phrase that echoed around Davos--to rein in global financial flows.

Bretton Woods is the mountain resort in New Hampshire where in 1944 the Allied nations met--with the U.S. calling almost all the shots--to plan a postwar financial system. The Bretton Woods creations included the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and a quarter-century of fixed exchange rates built around a U.S. dollar that was linked to gold. The fixed exchange rates and gold standard unraveled in the 1970s, and ever since we've had a system in which the IMF occasionally steps in to help countries in currency crises (usually imposing harsh terms in the process) but exercises no real control over the global financial system.

After the emerging-market currency collapses of the late 1990s, in which IMF aid wasn't much help, the lesson that emerging economies such as China and India took was that they needed to build up gigantic reserves of U.S. dollars to protect their currencies. To build those reserves, they ran big trade surpluses, which were in turn enabled mainly by record trade deficits in the U.S., which were in turn enabled by massive borrowing from around the world. It was an extremely unbalanced financial ballet, and it has now come crashing to the ground.

In the view of many outside the U.S. (and some within), the only way to limit such excesses is through a bigger, more powerful IMF that can act as a central bank to the world--and knock heads when needed. While everybody agrees that this new IMF needs to be less dominated by the U.S. and Western Europe, things get controversial as soon as you go past voting rights. Should capital flows be restricted? Should there be limits on trade deficits and surpluses? Should the IMF be able to order around even the U.S.? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, global capitalism will have entered a new and dramatically less freewheeling era.

To read Justin Fox's daily take on business and the economy, go to time.com/curiouscapitalist

(Time article)