Is our foreign policy problem due to Obama's weakness?

Comment on
Crisis makes US reliability questioned overseas
By Steven R. Hurst ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://goo.gl/v2shMB

What? No mention in this article about Snowden and the NSA leaks, which are still coming in? Or the world's reaction when US allies blocked the Ecuadorian presidential airplane from landing to refuel (which it turns out nearly killed him), and the growing consensus in the world that this kind of kow-towing to the American bullies has to stop? 

Or the refusal of the President of Brazil to meet with Obama over NSA espionage? 

Or the fact that it was the British Parliament and the US Congress that stopped Obama's war on Syria, driven by popular demand? 

Or the fact that the dollar is a corpse on steroids and the BLS statistics have been exposed as lies covering up a collapsing economy? 

Or the fact that the Fed can't stop buying US bonds without setting off a panic? Or that they had to publicly admit in January or February that they couldn't deliver to Germany the gold they were supposedly holding for it - presumably because they don't really have it? 

Or that countries are already abandoning the dollar and starting to trade their own currencies for oil? That it isn't just our supposed enemies that are dumping the dollar as fast as they can? 

The article's message seems to be that the problem is US lack of will and resolve, that if only Obama would be stronger and more ruthless the US could regain its world leadership. In one way the reality is much more grim. The US economic and banking system and their attempt to rule the world has reached a natural limit and is collapsing from within. All these external events are a reflection of the countries of the world starting to react to that collapse. 

The bright side is that we have been given a precious moment when the people of our land could step in and take it back and reclaim our democracy, if we can stop fighting each other over phony manufactured issues and ideologies and start talking to each other more plainly about the real problems and needs that we are actually experiencing and dealing with. 


I've been wondering for going on six years now if the point of the world bankers (led by Goldman Sachs, his biggest early sponsor) in putting Obama in the Presidency was to put a "Democratic" label on the systemic collapse they knew was coming - a compliant "patsy" to take the blame when the music stops.  In Obama they have a polished pseudo-liberal with a deep family history of loyalty to the Security State, who talks like a socialist, confuses and divides the people of color who usually form the base of resistance movements, and who makes a good foil and hate object for the right-wing populist movement they are promoting.

Now that the collapse is starting to unfold, we may be seeing a lot more on this theme that Obama's weakness is the cause of it.

They have long memories, family memories, these rulers of ours.  They've never forgotten how the whole nation blamed and hated their man Herbert Hoover for the collapse of 1929 and the Great Depression, when the truth is that he neither caused nor could have stopped it.  If he had major blind spots they were those of everyone in his circles, including early on Franklin Roosevelt.  

Like them I have come to see the President as a leader with limited power.  I've seen the power-brokers trigger a collapse to get rid of a troublesome President (Carter.)  I don't believe they could cause or cure this "general crisis of capitalism" that we're facing.  But I've watched them do all they can - since my days as an economics student in the early '60's - to avert or postpone the next depression, and now to deny that it's happening.  

And now they've laid their plans and preparations for the unthinkable but inevitable as best they can, I find myself wondering if they've also picked the time for the meltdown and are deliberately trying to trigger it.

Worcester bank "fee" "backfires on struggling homeowners"

In response to Telegram and Gazette article

Worcester bank fee backfires on struggling homeowners
http://comments.telegram.com/assets/article_comments_html/104299945_ZA1.html
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The ordinance requiring banks to register with the City and post a $5000 bond when they file an Intent to Foreclose petition with the State has made a visible difference.  Properties foreclosed in the last few years that are going to ruin now seem less common around town compared to properly secured and weatherized ones. But the practice of passing this deposit on to the borrower needs to be outlawed. City Manager O'Brien deserves applause for his statements and for pursuing the banks on this. 

This is just one more example of an endless litany I hear from people. There often seems to be no logic, rhyme or reason - or decency - to the things these big banks do. Their behavior of toward their borrowers makes a mockery of all of our notions of fair dealing or even what banking is. 

For example, when people run into trouble on their mortgage payments due to some circumstance like a layoff or divorce and go to the bank for help - sometimes just with catching up - many report being told (illegally!) that they need to first be three months behind on their payments. So they let themselves fall three months behind and then find themselves in a nightmare world of negotiations often dragging on for years, leading almost inevitably to foreclosure. Fees and penalties pile up, days spent on hold or re-faxing paperwork the bank couldn't find. 

And just when the borrower thinks they have a deal, the bank invents a new rule - or just forecloses anyway! The example here of a bank foreclosing after having completed the loan modification is typical. 

This is not banking - or even capitalism - as you learned about it in school. These banks are mostly merely servicing loans that have been placed in a trust against which mortgage-backed securities were issued. They notoriously show little concern for recovering the investment. They get handsomely paid out of the trust fund, and their biggest payoff is for the foreclosure! Their victims include the borrowers, the City - and the investors who bought those securities! 

Now we need the City Council to pass Mandatory Mediation next week, which has been highly effective wherever it has been tried. 
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By the way, many of those hollowed-out and semi-fraudulant Mortgage Backed Securities have been purchased by the Federal Reserve Banks as part of their Quantitative Easing programs. The Fed is a private institution, fully owned by other mega-banks, but they issue our public money. Their buying of these securities contributes to a growing lack of confidence throughout the world in the stability of the dollar.

In the end we will all pay the price for this vast system of fraud.