By Patrick Wood, Editor
Jan­uary 7, 2010

Tim­othy Gei­thner is a rising star within the mem­ber­ship of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion: He is highly edu­cated, has exten­sive reg­u­la­tory expe­ri­ence, and is wiling to bend, break or obscure the rules to favor his global elite bosses.

In November 2008 when Gei­thner was Pres­i­dent of the NY Fed­eral Reserve, just before becoming Obama’s Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury, recently dis­cov­ered e-mails reveal that Gei­thner and the NY Fed pres­sured the bailed-out AIG into keeping it’s mouth shut about which banks were receiving tax­payer funds in exchange for toxic assets known as “credit swaps.” (This story was made pos­sible by copies of e-mails between Fed and AIG offi­cials that were recently secured by Cal­i­fornia Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Dar­rell Issa (R-CA.))

Fur­ther­more, the NY FED and AIG then con­spired to offi­cially hide the event when AIG was required to make a reg­u­la­tory filing to the SEC on December 24, 2008: The Fed crossed out the ref­er­ence on its records and AIG excluded the facts on their filing.

In November 2008, the NY Fed was offi­cially in charge of nego­ti­a­tions between AIG and those banks that were “to big to fail.” More than a dozen banks, including Goldman Sachs and Societe Gen­erale SA, received pay­ments of $62.1 bil­lion from AIG for worth­less mortgage-backed con­tracts. What a sweet­heart deal they got, too: 100 cents on the dollar!

No wonder that Gei­thner wanted to hide the details.

On behalf of the tax­payer, AIG was sup­posed to nego­tiate steep dis­counts for these worth­less con­tracts. Yet, in October, the NY Fed had ordered AIG to not seek dis­counts from the banks, which directly dinged tax­payers for at least $13 billion.

Around November 24, 2008, when Gei­thner learned that Obama intended to nom­i­nate him for the top Trea­sury job, he was offi­cially recused from mat­ters dealing with spe­cific com­pa­nies. In other words, he ran like a rabbit and insu­lated him­self from any fur­ther involve­ment that might be dis­cov­ered during his Senate con­fir­ma­tion hearings.

Gei­thner suc­cess­fully obscured his still-hidden deal­ings with AIG and was sub­se­quently con­firmed to be the head watchdog and guardian of America’s money center.

This level and sophis­ti­ca­tion of cor­rup­tion is without par­allel in the his­tory of the world. It is cal­cu­lated, brazen and blatant.

Remember that in Sep­tember 2008, then-Secretary of the Trea­sury Henry “Ham­merin’ Hank” Paulson demanded $700 bil­lion in bailout funds from Con­gress with no strings attached. Paulson lit­er­ally extorted the money by claiming that America would com­pletely col­lapse in days or weeks if he didn’t get the money autho­rized imme­di­ately. The fact that Paulson was for­merly CEO of Goldman Sachs, a com­pany with heavy rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion, didn’t deter his demands nor Con­gress’ total capit­u­la­tion to them.

U.S. tax­payers should demand that Con­gress imme­di­ately start impeach­ment pro­ceed­ings to remove Gei­thner as Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury. Per­haps the threat of a publicly-broadcast Senate trial would moti­vate Obama to fire him before other incrim­i­nating evi­dence could be presented.

From a layman’s per­spec­tive, crim­inal charges facing Gei­thner might start with some­thing like these:

• Per­jury – lying to and with­holding infor­ma­tion from the U.S. Senate while under oath
• Theft - ille­gally diverting bil­lions of Trea­sury funds to selected global banks
• Con­spiracy to con­ceal a crim­inal act – coercing AIG to file
  false reg­u­la­tory state­ments with the Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion
  (SEC)
• Malfea­sance – com­mis­sion of an unlawful act in the course of an offi­cial capacity

The August Review has long pointed out and doc­u­mented cases where mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion have dis­cov­ered ways to raid the U.S. Trea­sury for pri­vate gain. A few of these arti­cles include:

• America Plun­dered by the Global Elite – May 18, 2005
• Plun­dering the Public Purse – March 21, 2008
• BAILOUT: America’s Finan­cial Ruin – October 6, 2008

It should be reit­er­ated that all bankers and cor­po­rate exec­u­tives are not greedy and cor­rupt. In fact, the vast majority are loyal Amer­i­cans, law-abiding, family ori­ented and civic-minded. The small group of inter­na­tion­al­ists who are mem­bers of the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion are the polar oppo­site of main­stream America and live and operate as if they are above the law and any account­ability to the people of the coun­tries where they have busi­ness inter­ests. From its founding in 1973 by Zbig­niew Brzezinski and David Rock­e­feller, the Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion has never had more than 400 mem­bers at any one time; of those mem­bers, only about one third are directly con­nected to banks and global cor­po­ra­tions. Since Com­mis­sion mem­ber­ship is drawn from Europe, Asia and North America, U.S. mem­ber­ship is obvi­ously quite small.

The August Review’s 2009 article Obama: Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion Endgame was not widely crit­i­cized when it reported that about 12 per­cent of the U.S. mem­ber­ship had been appointed by Pres­i­dent Obama to top-level posi­tions in his admin­is­tra­tion: Tim­othy Gei­thner, Susan Rice, Gen James Jones, Thomas Donilon, Paul Volker, Adm. Dennis Blair, Kurt Camp­bell, James Stein­berg, Richard Haas, Dennis Ross and Richard Hol­brooke. Another Tri­lat­eral member, Robert Hor­mats was appointed later in 2009.

If America is to sur­vive this pan­demic of high-level cor­rup­tion, then this Tri­lat­eral Com­mis­sion hege­mony must first be jeti­soned from all posi­tions and depart­ments of our gov­ern­ment; merely electing another party in November 2010 will not accom­plish this.

— —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — -

Patrick Wood is editor of The August Review and The August Fore­cast, and is co-author with the late Antony C. Sutton of Tri­lat­erals Over Wash­ington Vol­umes I and II.

By Patrick Wood

The Bible warns that “… the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil” (1 Ti. 6:10) So, just when you think you have just about seen it all, some­thing even more shocking turns up. Like this…

Either global bankers are seducing Islamic dic­ta­tors, or vice versa. Even if they are seducing each other at the same time, the result will be the same: Islamic/Shari’a banking is coming to the United States and other western nations, thanks to global banks such as Cit­i­group, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

With Great Britain now pledging to become the Islamic banking center of the world, the stam­pede by all global banks to enter the world of Islamic banking is well underway.

Western banking met Islam many decades ago, but only began to sleep with her a few years ago. Since then, it is has become a wanton and open affair.

The impli­ca­tions for the west, and espe­cially for the United States, are stag­gering. Because all Islamic banking prod­ucts must be cre­ated and offered according to strict Shari’a law, global banks are doing for Islam what it could never do on its own: give legit­i­macy to Shari’a and infil­trate it into the fabric of western society.

What is Islamic banking?

Simply put, “Islamic banking and finance” cre­ates, sells and ser­vices prod­ucts that are in strict accor­dance with Shari’a. In the Islamic cul­ture, it is referred to as “Shari’a finance” and covers the prac­tices of banking, invest­ment, bonds, loans, bro­kerage, etc.

To insure Shari’a com­pli­ance, banks must hire Shari’a scholars to review and approve each product and prac­tice as “halal”, the Muslim equiv­a­lent of kosher in Judaism. Because there is a shortage of such scholars, there is com­pe­ti­tion between banks to find the best expert to sit on their boards of direc­tors. This pro­vides the highest legit­i­macy to each ruling because it is made at the director rather man­age­ment level.

It should be noted that most of these scholars are from the school of rad­ical Wahhabi/Salafi Shari’a in Saudi Arabia and else­where, holding views dia­met­ri­cally opposed to the basic values of Western civilization.

Shari’a finance has many dif­fer­ences from orthodox banking: Notably, it cannot charge interest (usury) and it calls for alms giving (zakat). It also calls for avoid­ance of exces­sive risk and may not be asso­ci­ated in any way with gam­bling, drinking alcohol, eating pork, etc.

Zakat demands a tithe of 2.5 per­cent of rev­enue be donated to Islamic charity. If western banks follow this rule, their con­tri­bu­tions will be stag­gering. It is cer­tain that a por­tion of this money will end up in the hands of rad­ical Mus­lims who are sworn to destroy the U.S. and replace its gov­ern­ment with Shari’a law.

Shari’a finance is a recent phe­nom­enon. There were very few Islamic banks prior to 1980. How­ever, with the Khomeini rev­o­lu­tion in Iran in 1979, Shari’a was sum­marily imposed throughout Iran and Shari’a finance took off.

The dark side of Shari’a

Shari’a is the legal and judi­cial system of Islam that is bru­tally imposed on many Islamic coun­tries in the middle east. It is the spe­cific embod­i­ment of the total­i­tarian ide­ology prac­ticed by the Tal­iban, Iranian Mul­lahs and Saudi Wahhabis.

Shari’a is per­pet­u­ated by claiming to have its roots in the Koran, but in fact it is mostly the product of rul­ings and dic­tates made by Islamic scholars and caliphs over sev­eral centuries.

For non-Muslims, Shari’a is best known for its medieval, harsh bru­tality. Many rul­ings handed down by Shari’a courts have shocked the western world, for instance:

• The December, 2007 “teddy bear” case in Sudan, where a British teacher was sen­tenced to 40 lashes and a year in jail for allowing her stu­dents to name their teddy bear “Mohammad.” Islamic mobs demon­strated in the streets and called for her execution.
• The November, 2007 case where a 19 year old gang-rape victim in Saudi Arabia received a sen­tence of 200 lashes for riding in the car with her rapists.
• In 2006, a 34 year-old mother was forcibly raped and ulti­mately tried and con­victed of adul­tery, and was ordered to be stoned to death.

Shari’a demands total and unques­tioned sub­mis­sion. Its sub­jects are told that Shari’a is given by Allah and that what­ever befalls them (good or bad) is Allah’s will. To ques­tion a judg­ment under Shari’a (right or wrong) is to ques­tion Shari’a itself and will only bring harsher pun­ish­ment. If a person receives harsh pun­ish­ment for some­thing they didn’t do, the ratio­nale is that Allah could and would have pre­vented it if that had been his will. This fatal­istic and deter­min­istic approach allows Shari’a rulers to get away with vir­tu­ally any thing that enters their head.

To the average western mind, Shari’a is no more than a medieval, bar­baric code that somehow sur­vived to the 21st cen­tury. It flies in the face of western law, phi­los­ophy, lib­erty and freedom. How­ever, it is the vehicle used to call for the com­plete destruc­tion of the west and in par­tic­ular the United States of America, which then will be replaced by Shari’a dictatorships.

How the banking rocket took off

At the behest of cor­po­rate trade moguls, numerous Free Trade Zones (FTZ’s) were cre­ated throughout the Islamic world that were full of wind­fall conditions.

For instance, the Dubai Inter­na­tional Finan­cial Centre (DIFC), is a 110 acre free trade zone that was founded in 2004 in Dubai, UAE. According to the DIFC web­site, par­tic­i­pants will enjoy “zero tax rate on income and profits, 100 per cent for­eign own­er­ship, no restric­tions on for­eign exchange or capital/profit repa­tri­a­tion, oper­a­tional sup­port and busi­ness con­ti­nuity facilities.”

Not sur­pris­ingly, Morgan Stanley’s appli­ca­tion was one of the first approved by the Dubai Finan­cial Ser­vices Authority to operate within the DIFC.

The director-general of the DIFC Authority, Dr. Omar Bin Sulaiman, wel­comed Morgan Stanley by stating,

“This is a tes­ti­mony to our status as an inter­na­tional finan­cial centre of repute. Morgan Stanley is a highly reputed organ­i­sa­tion and to have them here at the DIFC is a vin­di­ca­tion of our strategy to create a world-class finan­cial hub for the region. The oppor­tu­nity avail­able within the region, along with the state-of-the-art infra­struc­ture and the inter­na­tional reg­u­la­tory frame­work of the DIFC, pro­vides the ideal plat­form for insti­tu­tions such as Morgan Stanley to grow their busi­ness.” [Emphasis added]

DIFC and sim­ilar Free Trade Zones are a banker’s nir­vana into which global bankers have rushed head­long to estab­lish regional finan­cial centers.

And the payoff? A chance to enter and then dom­i­nate the Islamic banking industry. Such banking has over $1.5 tril­lion on the table today, and is growing at a steady and explo­sive rate of over 15% per year.

Good old western know-how

Under­standing that Islamic banking is a very recent phe­nom­enon is under­scored by the fact that its largest and most pres­ti­gious inter­na­tional con­fer­ence, World Islamic Banking Con­fer­ence (WIBC) has met for a mere 14 years. The most recent meeting just con­cluded in Bahrain and attracted over 1,000 banking del­e­gates from 35 countries.

Two years ago, the 12th annual WIBC (2005) con­fer­ence kicked off with the “Governor’s Table” ses­sion titled “Reg­u­lation & Busi­ness: Cre­ating a Frame­work for Islamic Banking & Finance to Thrive.” Panel member and speaker number two was Dr. David Mullins, CEO of Vega Asset Man­age­ment in New York.

Who is Mullins? He is in the white-hot core of inter­na­tional banking. Mullins was Vice Chairman and Gov­ernor of the Board of Gov­er­nors of the Fed­eral Reserve System under Greenspan during George H.W. Bush’s pres­i­dency. As gov­ernor, he rep­re­sented the Fed at meet­ings of the G-10 Gov­er­nors, the Inter­na­tional Mon­e­tary Fund, the Orga­ni­za­tion for Eco­nomic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment, and the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments. Prior to that, he was the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary for Domestic Finance at the U.S. Depart­ment of the Treasury.

The next topic at the Governor’s Table was “Industry in Tran­si­tion: Trends & Inno­va­tions for Islamic Finan­cial Insti­tu­tions in an Increas­ingly Com­pet­i­tive Global Market,” where sev­eral speakers included Dr. Samuel L. Hayes III, Jacob Schiff Pro­fessor of Invest­ment Banking Emer­itus at Har­vard Busi­ness School. According to Hayes,

“The growing accep­tance among Mus­lims of Halal sav­ings and invest­ment prod­ucts over the past decade has been impres­sive. Con­se­quently, a number of con­ven­tional Western finan­cial insti­tu­tions have eagerly moved into this market as the array of invest­ment vehi­cles has broadened.”

The closed-door CEO Strategy Ses­sion was cen­tered around the McK­insey Com­pet­i­tive­ness Report, devel­oped in con­junc­tion with the WIBC by the very elite McK­insey & Com­pany based in New York.

In fact, McK­insey & Com­pany was listed as a “Strategic Part­ner” of the WIBC, along­side of global accounting firm Ernst & Young and the con­sum­mate global invest­ment banker, Goldman Sachs. (Remember that in 2005, Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury Henry Paulson was CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs.)

Another key speaker was Dr. Robert Kaplan, Baker Foun­da­tion Pro­fessor at the Har­vard Busi­ness School and acclaimed author of many man­age­ment books like Bal­anced Score­card and Strategy Maps. In a pre-conference press release, Kaplan stated

“I look for­ward to pre­senting to Islamic banking leaders the latest ideas on strategy exe­cu­tion that delivers per­for­mance break­throughs. I will present how suc­cessful orga­ni­za­tions have built strategy maps around a common value proposi­tion, com­mu­ni­cated to and moti­vated the work­force, and installed a new Office of Strategy Man­age­ment to sus­tain strategy execution.”

More recently, on December 6, 2007, the gen­eral man­ager of the Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments, Mal­colm Knight, addressed the Islamic Finan­cial Ser­vices Board Forum in Frank­furt, Germany:

“Clearly, there is expanding demand for these prod­ucts, and a closely asso­ci­ated desire on the part of banks, including non-Islamic banks, to pro­vide Islamic finan­cial ser­vices… The broad­ening appeal of Islamic finance is also evi­dent in the move by large inter­na­tional banks and other pri­vate sector finan­cial insti­tu­tions to pro­vide Islamic finan­cial services.”

Mullins, Hayes, Kaplan, McK­insey, Goldman Sachs, Ernst & Young, Bank for Inter­na­tional Set­tle­ments? Do you see the pattern?

The west is giving away the know-how, with gusto, to enable Shari’a banking and guar­antee its suc­cess throughout the world. And to what ends?

For one, Britain’s PM Gordon Brown has point­edly stated that he intends to make London the Islamic finance cap­ital of the world. Fur­ther, he pledged that in 2008 the British gov­ern­ment will issue its own “sukuk”, or Shari’a com­pliant bonds. Yes, gov­ern­ment debt issued as Shari’a compliant.

At the June 13, 2006 Islamic Finance Trade Con­fer­ence in London, Brown revealed,

“Today British banks are pio­neering Islamic banking – London now has more banks sup­plying ser­vices under Islamic prin­ci­ples than any other Western finan­cial centre.”

Brown’s state­ments can only be taken as a chal­lenge by the New York banking estab­lish­ment to beat him to the finish line. It doesn’t matter who wins this race because the result will be the same: Shari’a banking is quickly encir­cling the globe and forcing a de facto accep­tance of Shari’a law.

Con­clu­sion

Inter­na­tional bankers have long ago proven them­selves to be com­pletely amoral when it comes to money. They bankrolled the Bol­shevik Rev­o­lu­tion in 1918 just as blithely as they bankrolled Hitler in the 1930’s. For­tu­nately for us, nei­ther suc­ceeded in con­quering the world.

With Islam, odds of its suc­ceeding are rad­i­cally dif­ferent. To start with, there are already 1.6 bil­lion Mus­lims in the world, and it is the fastest growing reli­gion in his­tory. Sec­ondly, the spread of Islam is richly financed by the oil that is extracted from mid-eastern coun­tries. Thirdly, Islam has already infil­trated most of the west, espe­cially in Europe.

And now, Islam has behind it the com­bined sup­port and encour­age­ment of the entire global banking community.

The unholy alliance between Islam and global banking may be the final leg on the age-old quest for global dom­i­na­tion. Don’t be sur­prised at the silence of the global elite the next time you hear Islamist mobs chant “Death to Amer­ica” – their goals are now intertwined.

Bib­li­og­raphy:

Sharia’s Trojan Horse
Islamic Finance or Financing Islamism? (.pdf file)
Islamic Eco­nomics: What Does it Mean?
Fed­eral Reserve speech to Islamic Finan­cial Ser­vices Industry Sem­inar
Fed speech on Reg­u­la­tion and Super­vi­sion of Islamic Banking
Islamic banking rises on oil wealth, drawing non-Muslims
How the West Came to Run Islamic Banks
12th Annual World Islamic Banking Con­fer­ence
Uni­ver­sity Islamic Finan­cial
Islam and Mammon, Timur Kuran

By Patrick Wood, Editor
July 18, 2006

Do Fed­eral Reserve man­agers secretly believe that the U.S is bank­rupt and is about to go under?

Well, where there’s smoke, there’s fire!

A stun­ning 23 page report by Pro­fessor Lau­rence J. Kot­likoff titled “Is the U.S. Bank­rupt?” was issued by the Fed­eral Reserve Bank of St. Louis in November, 2005, and qui­etly posted on their public web­site. Although pub­licly acces­sible, it was totally ignored by the U.S. press.

Kot­likoff is pro­fessor of Eco­nomics at Boston Uni­ver­sity and has penned at least 355 papers pub­lished by the Fed­eral Reserve over sev­eral years.

Kot­likoff con­cludes that “Coun­tries can and do go bank­rupt. The U.S., with its $65.9 tril­lion fiscal gap, seems clearly headed down that path.”

The fiscal gap of $65.9 tril­lion is more than 5 times U.S. Gross Domestic Product and twice as large as national wealth. The fiscal gap is all the money that the U.S. owes now and in the future, for which it doesn’t have rev­enue to pay for. According to the Kotlikoff,

One way to wrap one’s head around $65.9 tril­lion is to ask what fiscal adjust­ments are needed to elim­i­nate this red hole. The answers are ter­ri­fying. One solu­tion is an imme­diate and per­ma­nent dou­bling of per­sonal and cor­po­rate income taxes. Another is an imme­diate and per­ma­nent two-thirds cut in Social Secu­rity and Medicare ben­e­fits. A third alter­na­tive, were it fea­sible, would be to imme­di­ately and per­ma­nently cut all fed­eral dis­cre­tionary spending by 143 per­cent. (p.

Imagine Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Fed., get­ting up in front of Con­gress and stating “The U.S. is clearly headed toward bankruptcy!”

The stock market would crash, the dollar would melt down, the bond market would implode and real estate would be frozen in time.

The greater ques­tion is, “What does the Fed intend to do about its bank­rupt client? After all, the Fed has the exclu­sive fran­chise to loan money to the gov­ern­ment and for the issuance/destruction of money and credit in the U.S. The Fed has only one client– the U.S. Gov­ern­ment – and it is about to bite the mon­e­tary dust.

This writer believes that the Fed’s proac­tive response is already well underway, but we have not rec­og­nized is as such — until now.

As of June 29, 2006, the Fed has raised dis­count rates for the 17th straight time. This has the effect of with­drawing credit from the banking system. In other words, the Fed has been pulling in its loans and cre­ating resis­tance for bankers to not lend as freely as before. Ask around the banking com­mu­nity (as I have done) and see how willing they are to loan money these days! They are col­lec­tively pulling in their horns.

When John Snow abruptly resigned as Sec­re­tary of Trea­sury on May 30, 2006, Pres­i­dent Bush imme­di­ately nom­i­nated his replace­ment: Henry Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs is part of the white-hot core of global banking, ranking with Brown Brothers, Har­riman, Lehman Brothers, Kuhn Loeb, Inc. J.P. Morgan, Chase and others. Is Paulson such a patriot that he would leave a $38 mil­lion per year job for the paltry salary of the head of Trea­sury? After all, he was the highest paid CEO on Wall Street and was still rising. Also con­sider that Paulson’s per­sonal stock in Goldman Sachs is cur­rently worth almost $500 mil­lion. He is no pauper!

Against any other pos­sible logic, it’s more likely that Paulson went on the inside (of gov­ern­ment) to pro­tect his crony’s invest­ments: And what better place to do that than as head of the U.S. Treasury?

This writer hates to be a pes­simist, but this does not make for an opti­mistic near-term or long-term fore­cast. Mon­e­tarily speaking, it’s time to “run for the hills.”

The demise of the dollar may be at hand.

(Ed. note: For you his­tory buffs, com­pare today’s mon­e­tary sce­nario with 1928 – 1929 and the sub­se­quent sharp removal of credit from the manic stock market of the 1920′s.)