Making her debut on Coast, Catherine Austin Fitts of the Solari(1) investment group, used her business and financial expertise to outline how some govt. agencies have siphoned trillions of dollars into black budgets. A staggering $4 trillion has been taken from the federal government, she declared, tracing the problem back to the 1940's when laws were first passed to give intelligence agencies the right to draw money out of other agencies without accountability. Then in the 1980's, she continued, executive orders were made that allowed corporations to handle sensitive government accounts without transparency.
The combined effect of these legal and executive moves "was really a license to steal," she said. America's rise to power was fueled by "dirty money," from the drug trade, organized crime, and to the largest extentâ€"securities fraud, Fitts detailed. These profits are often laundered into the economy through real estate, she said, citing cases of HUD mortgage scams as an example.
The middle class is being "gentrified out of existence by a financial coup d'etat" and the subsidizing of this financial market is destroying the environment, she said. Fitts suggested that people vote with their resources, switch to local banks and stop backing people who are complicit with criminality. She also advised investors to look into gold and silver, as the dollar is losing its value as it falls in the world market.

1. http://www.solari.com

The Secret Budget

How many of America's tax dollars go into the U.S. intelligence budget? "No one knows exactly what the figure is because the intelligence agencies have successfully argued that nobody, including Congress, should know how much they get, for fear that the mere size of the budget would provide useful information to America's enemies," Dave Lindorff writes for the political newsletter CounterPunch. In spite of that secrecy, the Intelligence Resource Program has estimated that in 2004 there was spending in excess of over $40 billion on intelligence, which represents $150 per year from every man, woman and child in America. Read more here(1).

1. http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12082004.html

Bumper Music

Bumper music from Monday April 04, 2005