Click to play“Perhaps the hardest thing to imagine about the secret life of the cryptocracy is that it isn’t a subculture at all: it’s a superculture. It’s an underworld that rules over each and every one of us, and trying to see it is like trying to imagine a fifth dimension from the perspective of a fourth. Yet we also belong to this parallel world and it has always been there, acting on us in ways both invisible and oppressive—oppressive most of all because invisible. For what we fail to see continues indefinitely.” ~ Jason Horsley
By Catherine Austin Fitts
The Goal of the 2018 Annual Wrap Up Theme
The theme for our 2018 Annual Wrap Up is “The Real Game of Missing Money.” By collecting many of the materials we have published on the missing money into a digital PDF and hard copy form that is distributed globally, I hope to ensure that all the evidence for the ongoing financial coup d’etate in American is archived on a distributed open source basis.
My goal is to address the long-term refusal of the U.S. government and its central bank to obey the laws regarding federal financial accounts and operations as well as the recent adoption of accounting policies that will permit federal agencies and scores of related entities to keep secret books, thus rendering public financial reports meaningless.
These changes also render meaningless any pretense that the U.S. government and its finances operate according to the U.S. Constitution and its own financial laws. This dramatically increases the ability of whomever controls this mechanism to radically reengineer the federal government and budget and to use private armies to reengineer US land use and enforcement and to start foreign wars.
In short, the U.S. government has implemented accounting policies that shift its governmental model from a Constitutional republic to something else. A small invisible group of people (we can’t know who they are) can run the finances of the largest taxation and securities operation in the world by a secret process (we can’t know by what process) and keep their decisions and the financial realities and the financial facts of ownership and control secret.
U.S. Senate Staff Describe a “Criminal Enterprise”
There are many words that could be used to describe such a governance model. The phrase I find most appropriate was used in 2001 by the chief of staff to the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees HUD and Treasury to describe the U.S. government mortgage insurance and housing subsidy operations. The mortgage bubble engineered by the U.S. government and central bank was in full bloom at the time. The term they chose to describe an operation run by a matrix of agencies and banks—FHA, HUD, the U.S. Treasury, the Department of Justice, the Office of Management and Budget, and the New York Fed and its member banks—was a “criminal enterprise.”
What Do We Know?
The purpose of this report is to lay out the facts as we know them regarding the failure of the U.S. government to produce reliable financial reports. Two of the standout features of this failure include $21 trillion of undocumentable adjustments at DOD and HUD between federal fiscal years 1998-2015 and the recent publication of Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) Statement 56, which authorizes secret books on a permanent basis. I also offer some history, analysis, and opinion in the hopes that these will inspire you—whether as a U.S. citizen, taxpayer, investor, or a global citizen affected by changes in the U.S. security umbrella—to do your own due diligence.
Whichever roles concern you, the adoption of FASAB Statement 56 and the events that led up to its issuance necessitate that you do serious due diligence on what this means to you and your unique circumstances. I hope that this aggregation of resources can make doing so easier for you.
What we fail to see "continues indefinitely." Or, as I often say, "crime that pays is crime that stays." Before we can address solutions, we must face and understand the problem. I have been working on the illegalities, fraud, and related harm done by the federal finances for 30 years, and I have put forward numerous proposals to convert a “negative return on investment” machinery to positive returns. I started in 1989, when I was asked as Assistant Secretary of Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner to clean up the finances of the U.S. mortgage insurance operations as they were rocked by the twin scandals of the savings and loan (S&L) crisis and Iran-Contra fraud. Given these experiences, I appreciate the depth of the issues involved—my estimates indicate that more than 50% of the income in every one of 3100 counties in America comes directly or indirectly from the federal budget and credit operations. At the same time, I know what we have all known all along. If you keep kicking the can, at some point, the economic squeeze will become unbearable, and you are likely to hit a wall.
That time is approaching.
U.S. Debt and Unfunded Liabilities: Rush Hour Cometh
Officially reported U.S. Treasury debt is starting to expand at a rapid pace. Outstanding debt disclosed in official reports is now greater than our annual GDP and is expanding at an increasing rate. Treasury debt grew by 6% in 2018 and is expected to grow by 8% in 2019, despite many years of “economic recovery.” If the economy slows or goes into a recession, the debt growth will accelerate. Add unfunded liabilities, and the picture deteriorates even further.
The current U.S. administration is attempting to outgrow the debt—but these efforts are weighed down by the political divisions involved in changing a model that has made enormous profits from globalization and a military-industrial-congressional complex designed to create and profit from more centralization. The result is a series of factions that all produce more support for centralization at the expense of markets and democratic process—whether through technocracy or fascism.
If these factions are successful, the percentage of U.S. GDP that will flow through federal taxation, spending, and credit will continue to increase, while the federal accounts and reporting go dark.
Who Will Buy the U.S. Debt?
Who will buy this debt? Currently, foreign investors hold 29% of outstanding U.S. Treasury debt. However, foreign countries and central banks are grappling with their own high levels of debt. Some also fear economic sanctions and trade wars and wish to reduce their dollar dependency. A few, such as China, are looking to expand the global liquidity of their own currencies and bond markets. Given this combination of factors, it is unlikely that foreign sovereign wealth funds and central banks will provide a significant source of fresh funds. Along with a significant increase in corporate debt maturities over the next five years, the competition for private global investors and funds sitting in the offshore havens will be fierce.
That leaves three alternatives. The first is the Federal Reserve, which is reducing bond holdings ballooned during quantitative easing. The second is U.S. investors, including pension funds and retirement accounts. The third is the U.S. government, using funds such as the Social Security Trust Fund and the Exchange Stabilization Fund and its trading partners. Whatever combination is used, the demand to issue growing amounts of U.S. debt will involve significant “monetization” of the new debt. That means monetary inflation, if not hyperinflation. In addition, the risks of mandates forcing pensions and retirement accounts to allocate increasing assets to new debt are rising.
Don’t be surprised if the primary dealers are now assuring large bond holders that FASAB Statement 56 provides sufficient behind-the-scenes control to ensure creditors’ rights are represented in the potential face of an unruly population or fractious politics in Washington.
Annual Growth in the U.S. Cost of Living
While official statistics say that inflation is low, a trip to the grocery store will demonstrate an annual increase in the cost of living for U.S. households that is averaging 8%-14%, depending on where you live. That’s not hyperinflation, but it signals a currency debasement that is contributing to the steady debasement of U.S. society and culture. I live in a county that created a place for people to have car trunk sales—selling their possessions from the back of their car because they did not own a home where they could have yard sales. That was in 2001. A lot of people have been squeezed, have failed, or have died since then. To a certain extent, the opioid epidemic in America is simply a way to feel good on the way out.
How Long Can This Last?
How much longer can the U.S. kick the can down the road? Is it one year? Five years? Ten years? I don’t know, because this is a military question. How much longer can our military superiority and global operations permit us to maintain reserve currency status despite the breakdown of the Bretton Woods trading system? Much of the intelligence we need to assess the strategic issues and timing is secret. The fact of the matter is if the United States can maintain dominance in technology, science, and space, the U.S. dollar could remain the global reserve currency indefinitely. That does not mean, however, that many U.S. citizens will survive both the cost-of-living squeeze and the radical government reengineering and “piratization” underway.
This is a political question. In theory, we have three options. We can go to war, we can depopulate, or we can change. What happens if rather than behaving like crabs in a bucket, we surprise ourselves and rise to the occasion? Real change requires trust, however. It is difficult to trust a leadership that continues to get wealthier as $21 trillion goes missing from federal accounts—while the same leadership insists we have no money to fund pension funds or college educations.
The wealth creation potential of "positive return on investment" federal flows combined with new technology is theoretically explosive. However, realizing that potential means letting go of secrecy and privilege. Along with serious potential legal liabilities that pose practical problems, the privilege created by secrecy is the most serious addiction on the planet. Helping the U.S. aristocracy overcome their withdrawal pains is a political challenge we have failed to address. To date, we have chosen “fight to the death” rather than “truth and reconciliation.”
Secret books such as are envisioned by FASAB Statement 56 are a signal of real trouble ahead. Secret books expand the power of a secret group of people to transfer what they can while the getting is good. They also make it easier to use U.S. special forces and covert operations or private mercenary armies to extend the life of the U.S. reserve currency and enhance corporate profits and related campaign contributions. Secret books increase the risk of more aggressive and violent kicks of the can. I believe this will include reengineering the U.S. government and U.S. resources and domestic land use in a manner significantly outside domestic and international law. The human and environmental damage that is occurring from secret U.S. operations and suppression of critical intelligence is already profound. U.S. life expectancy is falling. Inequality is rising.
The potential future scenarios have implications for all of us—whether citizen or investor—across the globe.
Caveat Emptor
The time has come to invoke the ancient rule of “Caveat Emptor”—Buyer Beware. The U.S. government will not provide you with adequate disclosure. Nor will the U.S. Congress, the media, the primary and secondary dealers, or the rating agencies.
If you are financing this machinery—as you pay taxes, buy Treasury securities, or work for the operations—you are responsible for understanding what you support. You are responsible for assessing and pricing the quality of the credit and the promises you are getting, as they really are, whether through a Treasury bond or a pension fund promise. You are responsible for the spiritual and moral implications of what you are supporting and what you pretend not to know despite your legal responsibilities. If you want the rule of law to apply to you, then you must take responsibility to withdraw from financing the absence of the rule of law or face the consequences. If you are a U.S. citizen, consider the words of Edward R. Murrow: “We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.”
Please do your own due diligence and make your own decisions about what is happening and what you should do. I hope that the 2018 Annual Wrap Up will assist you in this task.
Related Reading
The Solari Report’s public collection on the missing money can be found at https://missingmoney.solari.com