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Smart People Smart Money

Economic Slavery by-way of Money's Illusion:

The Underlying Factor in Society as Seen in These Publications & Documentary Videos

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Noam Chomsky is interviewed by the BBC and states historical fact against popular ignorance. Please view all three videos, your paradigm and understanding depends greatly on it.. regardless your opinion of Chomsky.
Chris Hedges is concise in his explanation of the bigger picture of our Corporatocracy.
News article showcasing an America who was ( Bank of America's inception / original owner ).
Educational Forum from The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover discussing food control and the call for action or else.
Interesting facts and tidbits from a magazine article regarding money and people's relationship with it
Jesse Ventura, quite possibly a political necessity in terms of being far removed from career and in-bred politicos. Put your opinions aside and listen to this radio interview. He has nothing to hide or lose by telling the truth / his honest opinion
Status Anxiety, documentary about materialism and other such substance-less trappings of wealth.
How the Invisible Hand of the Pentagon and American tax money goes unnoticed and unchecked
The fall of the American Empire, perhaps?
My America: A Government of Deception and Corruption, is a movie made in 3 weeks by a school student.
Smart People
Smart Education
Smart Money
Smart Discussion
Smart Results

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Public Ignorance, Media Manipulation and Historical Omissions.

This very important interview ( last six minutes of third segment / end of entire interview shows a very important historical information ) reveals much and clarifies what so many folks have somehow forgotten or believe does not happen anymore in the world today, but still does. Please view and educate yourself. Also, please put aside any prejudice, racism or opinion you may have regarding the subject of the interview, for he does speak more truth aside from personal opinion as history depicts. And try to ignore the lady doing sign language unless you understand her, she is 1/3 in the screen and can be quite distracting to those who cannot concentrate too well.

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Chris Hedges on the Corporatocracy

Banker + Gangster = Bankster

It seems timely to resurrect this Americanism from the 1930s - one of many evocative words the United States has contributed to the English language, says Harold Evans.

Americans are pretty good at adding words to the English language. We owe them pin-up girls, highbrows, killjoys, stooges, hobos, drop-outs, shills, bobby-soxers, hijackers, do-gooders and hitchhikers who thumb a ride.

The Americanisms are so much more concise and vivid. Instead of saying "sorry we're late but drivers ahead of us slowed us down when they craned their necks to look at a crash" you can say "we were held up by rubberneckers".

Words pop in and out of our language as social conditions change. The American gangster, which is still with us, has been around as a noun and a reality since 1896 according to my Shorter Oxford, but it seems to have dropped another Americanism from the 1930s and I think now is the time to revive it.

The word is bankster, derived by a marriage of banker and gangster.

It was coined, as far as I can deduce, by an American immigrant, a fiery Sicilian-born lawyer by the name of Ferdinand Pecora. He was the chief counsel to the US Senate Committee on Banking set up in the early 30s to probe the origins of the Crash of 1929.

He exposed quite a lot of the Wall Street practices that Harvard's Professor William Z Ripley had condemned in 1928. The believable Ripley called them - get ready for these Americanisms - "prestidigitation, double-shuffling, honey-fugling, hornswoggling and skullduggery".

The professor had vainly tried to warn President Calvin Coolidge that Wall Street was full of gas and was bound to blow up. To great discomfort all round, Pecora identified Coolidge himself, by then out of office, as one of those who'd been in on the honey-fugling.

The great banking house of JP Morgan had the president on a "preferred list" by which the bank's influential friends were given a chance to buy stock at half price. Shall we say, they made out like bandits?

Today the term bankster perfectly fits Bernard Madoff, whose crooked Ponzi scheme lost $50 billion of what the trade calls OPM - other people's money - invested with him.

Costly rug

But the revelations come thick and fast. People are now struggling for words to describe the latest example of Wall St's money madness. The fabled investment bank Merrill Lynch, run by one John Thain, had so many big zeroes on its balance sheet it would have been liquidated in December but for a merger with the Bank of America.

That was actually a shotgun marriage - in the US vernacular - since the Bank of America was forced to take billions of government money when it learned later that Merrill Lynch was down another $15bn.

Then what? In the few days in December while he was still in charge, Mr Thain reportedly spent nearly $4bn on staff bonuses. That's peanuts on Wall St. In 2007 Mr Thain himself received $83m.

But a week ago, CNBC's Charles Gasparino, in a detailed scoop on the Daily Beast website revealed that during the time Mr Thain was busy cost-cutting, he spent $1.1m doing up his office - $86,000 for a rug, $35,000 for something called a commode on legs.

Readers bayed for blood, posting comments such as: "Oh how I wish this was Revolutionary France and we peasants could storm the offices…"

The anger about the greed that got us into our mess is, in my view, wholly justified. And now we hear that 10 of the big banks that got $148bn from Uncle Sam so they could make loans to get things humming again have actually reduced their loan totals by $46bn.

Mr Thain now is history, having resigned, but the great Bank of America, the biggest in the US and maybe the world is now on the list of banks that may have to be nationalised - a word no red-blooded American ever thought would be uttered in the land of enterprise.

Have money, will lend

The piquancy of all this is that if the term banker is ever to be restored to its former prestige, the public and Wall St might reflect on one highly relevant example of a banker who was not a bankster.

It is the story of Amadeo Peter Giannini, a big man on the side of the little man. When the transcontinental railway started services to California after the line's completion in May 1869, he was among the very first passengers.

He was in the womb of his newlywed mother, 15-year-old Virginia. His father, having made money in the goldfields, had gone back to Italy for her. It is nice to think that as the young immigrants crossed the Rockies, their adventurous spirits somehow crossed the placental barrier.

Amadeo was born on 6 May, 1870. He grew up on a little farm, whose produce his mother and father sold in booming San Francisco. In 1877 when he was six, he saw his father gunned down. His mother moved to the city to buy wholesale from farmers and sell to shops.

Amadeo - or AP as he became known - grew into a tall, strong man, more than able to hold his own in the rough auctions for fruit and veg on the wharfs where traders met the farmers' boats. He helped to build a thriving business.

When he was 31 he sold his share, saying he had no interest in accumulating wealth. "No man owns a fortune," he said. "It owns him." It was the motto of his life.

He'd married and on the death of his father in law, was persuaded to take his vacant place on the board of a little bank in North Beach. He was appalled that they'd not lend money to poor immigrants. The rows in the board room reverberated over North Beach until AP walked out and started a little bank of his own to do that, the Bank of Italy.

From his work on the wharves, he'd become a shrewd judge of character, so he'd cheerfully lend money to pay doctor's bills for delivery of a baby if he judged the couple had integrity.

Phoenix from the rubble

On Wednesday 18 April, 1906, San Francisco was devastated by earthquake and fire. AP rushed to get all his gold and paper money out of danger, hid it under orange crates to conceal it from looters, and stood guard all night in his home.

It must have been a debilitating moment the next day to find his baby bank a mass of charred rubble. The bigger banks, who had vaults too hot to open, had no records and were not lending.

AP instead went down to a wharf close to the smoldering North Beach, flung a plank across two barrels, and with his baritone booming across the desolation, started lending some of his $80,000 to rebuild San Francisco

He looked for steamship captains he knew, shoved money into their hands, saying "go north and get lumber". AP radiated so much confidence, making a big show of jiggling his little bag of gold, hundreds who'd been hoarding cash and gold banked it with him. North Beach was built faster than any other area.

By 1918 he'd established California's first state-wide banking system. A little local bank in the valley that would have closed in a run after a bad harvest could now keep open by borrowing from the city branch.

He set out to build a nationwide banking system so that distressed areas could be helped by ones that were prospering. Wall St hated him. He beat off their attempts to destroy him. In the Great Depression, he took every opportunity in the New Deal legislation to get California revived in time for the war and the boom that followed.

He did it by putting the community first, himself last. He set up low interest instalment credit plans which enabled thousands to avoid the loan sharks and buy cookers and refrigerators and autos, and he built a whole new electrical industry with his loans.

He financed the Golden Gate bridge, and the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

No man could do so much good without being maligned. It was said he wore the mask of populism to create a dangerous instrument of personal power and personal wealth.

The truth is that the man whose life was money had no interest in money. He refused to take increases in pay and spurned every bonus. He banned insider trading. Shortly after retiring in 1945, when he found himself in danger of becoming a millionaire, he set up a foundation and gave it half his personal fortune.

And the little bank for the ordinary man that he founded?

The Bank of America.

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Law School Student Discussion Showcasing Financial Shenanigans by Corporate Criminals

Educational Forum from The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover

See running time 49:00 to 50:00 ( in one minute you'll be amazed at what the Producer says ) to encourage you to return to the beginning and watch entirely "The Future of Food" by Deborah Garcia. Very strong opinions / facts / accusations. This is Educational Forum from The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover hosted by Kurt Olson.

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Excerpt from Allure Magazine, March 2009 issue, page 52 titled:

Beauty By Numbers; Money

( female centric )

42 B.C.: Year Mark Antony met Cleopatra, whose incredible wealth would pay for his vast armies.

1898: Year The New York Times reported that female postal workers in the money-order department were not allowed to handle money directly.

10: Estimated number of 1933 Double Eagle coins ( valued at $20 at the time ) that were not melted down for gold by the U.S. mint during the Depression.

$7.6 million: Amount paid for a Double Eagle coin at a 2002 auction.

$10,000: Amount Richard Nixon won playing poker against fellow Navy sailors in 1943 -- money he later used to fund his first congressional bid in 1946.

24: Number of months the average American $20 bill is in circulation.

10: Number of $20 bills out of 11 that The Miami Herald collected in 1985 from prominent Floridians ( including Jeb Bush, Janet Reno and an archbishop ) that showed traces of cocaine.

54: Percentage of all coins produced by the U.S. Mint that are pennies.

94: Percentage of $1 bills collected from one community in western Ohio in 2002 that were found to carry traces of potentially disease-causing bacteria.

$100,000: Amount of reward money the Federal Bureau of Investigation offered for information leading to an arrest for the largest walk-in bank robbery in U.S. history -- in which an estimated $4 - $5 million was stolen from a Seattle-area bank in 1997.

$100,000: Amount in cash a woman attempted to use to bail out the man who was eventually convicted for that crime -- before being arrested herself for suspected money laundering.

5: Number of rubber-banded stacks of $100 bills ( totaling $5,100 ) that two Hickory, North Carolina trash collectors returned to a woman who had accidentally thrown them away in 2005.

1862: Year the Union began flooding Southern states with counterfeit Confederate notes with the intention of weakening the value of the currency.

60: Percentage of American women ages 21 to 34 who say they are in charge of balancing their family checkbook.

48: Percentage of women polled by Charles Schwab in 2008 who said that investing was "scary" ( half as many men said the same ); only 4 percent of women said they considered themselves to be "highly experienced" investors.

2: Percentage of billionaires who were women under 50 in 2008.

8.9: Percentage of each deposit kept by Coinstar change-counting machines.

830: Number of New York City schools that together collected an estimated 100 million pennies, later displayed in a 165-by-30-foot "Penny Harvest Field" at Rockefeller Center and then donated to various charities, in December 2007.

20,000: Estimated number of United States taxpayers who had accounts at Swiss bank UBS in December 2008.

79: Percentage of Americans who say they'd stop to pick up a penny from the ground.

50: Approximate percentage of the account balance that the government can take if a foreign account is found to have been intentionally unreported.

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Whatever you may opine regarding Jesse Ventura, this gentleman seems to speak with a clear mind and states and supports his claims very clearly... and if one were to listen objectively, you'll be able to hear him describe the death of freedom and the rise of.... well, you'll just have to hear it for yourself.

Jesse "the Mind" Ventura has a discussion / interview with podcaster Meria Heller talks about how ill-fated the United States may be due to the bought and sold leadership of this country by corporations. Lots of controversial view points, but they sound so near to home and factual, you'd wonder if America is still the country you thought it was... or supposed to be.

When listening to this interview, you'll begin to question if in fact America's sovereignty has been usurped. All points lead to this conclusion it seems... listen carefully. Contains mostly still images and slides along with a few video interludes... also includes some foul language, so please be advised.

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Status Anxiety ( Part 2 ) is a documentary by Alain De Botton showcasing the level of achievement in today's society as measured by one's income and material possessions. Very insightful and sobering. Be sure to watch the other segments on this video to capture the author's message.

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"Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World" by Trevor Paglen depicts how, if one were to "follow the money," one could peer into a world of ssecrets lead by unknown operatives in the United Stares and abroad. No conspiracy theory here folks, only simple accounting and honest fact-finding. Dare look into the empire and find out what the United States government has really been up to all this time. Be sure to listen to the final question and answer segment as Trevor clarifies some startly things.

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This is quite an intellectual and sobering discussion regarding the economic power directing the world as of 2008. I'd rather you listen for yourself to what these individuals are suggesting we are seeing. Quite startling. Please watch what the panel of guests in the video below are suggesting and reply with a comment on the blog... I think they are mentioning something similar to the fall of the Byzantine Empire, or the shift from one paradigm to another. Could this be what has become of America? What do you think?

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My America: A Government of Deception and Corruption

"My America: A Government of Deception and corruption" is a movie I made for my high school American Studies class. I spent 3 weeks (actual time of 100-120 hours) on this movie. It covers the two main topics of deception and corruption within our government.

It covers 4 historical events: Mexican-American war, Spanish-American war, Gulf of Tonkin, and the invasion of Panama, and 4 contemporary issues: Guantanamo Bay, Social Security, domestic wiretapping, and the war of Iraq (very in depth, about half of the movie).

If you want to go straight to the contemporary issues (more recent and thus more interesting to most) start the video 6 minutes in. On that note, as this was a 3 week project as opposed to a 1 year project (Loose Change), You might notice that the soundtrack is from Loose Change, this is an example of time restraints, because I had to spend my time on other tasks.

Researching, editing, video gathering, narrating, and everything else was all done by me, I didn't have additional help. I hope you enjoy the movie, and I encourage you to tell your friends about it. Sorry about some of the text quality, I didn't have time to change things for the google video version.

You can leave comments here or send them to my email address, myamerica.movie@gmail.com "My America: A Government of Deception and Corruption” contains unlicensed footage including, without limitation, copyrighted footage owned by CNN, PBS, Whitehouse.gov, The History Channel, ABC, CSPAN, Democracy Now, and “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire.”

The views expressed in this movie may not represent the views of the copyright owners or the individuals featured in such footage."

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Chris Hedges on the Corporatocracy