The Joke's On Us

Financial Literary Programs - Financial Literacy Month

4/9/2014 The fallacy of Financial Literacy Month - Chicago Tribune By Jill Schlesinger

I asked Olen how she felt about financial literacy and she quickly responded "it takes an incredibly complex and complicated financial services world, and thrusts all responsibility for navigating it safely on the customer. It presumes that the reason we can't save is that we lack the skills, and doesn't even deign to acknowledge the fact that the cost of health, education and housing has skyrocketed as our salaries have stagnated and fallen."  It's tough to argue against financial literacy -- after all, it sounds like a good idea, and if you argue against it, Olen says that it "sounds like you are against apple pie, but the fact is that it doesn't work." Sure, it's better to have an understanding of basic financial concepts, just like it's a good idea to understand rudimentary health care to be physically fit. But here's the eye-opener: data indicate that financial literacy simply does not work. Despite millions being spent on financial education projects, people are not that much wiser about the subject. Olen says, "Students who study the subject seem to know no more or less than those who do not." And plenty of financially savvy people do dopey things with their money all the time.  That it doesn't work should not be surprising, because Olen notes that much of the financial literacy effort is financed by big financial institutions, whose motives may be suspect. Many of these big companies promote their public education projects, while at the same time, continue to sell murky and complicated products.

Financial Literacy education programs are not making Americans any more financially literate.

In 2009, the Jump$tart Coalition published its most recent findings. The trend is unsettling. In 1997, the average financial literacy score was 57.3% — a failing grade, but that's the best it has ever been, and it has fallen consistently ever since.  NFI Report by 2008, the average financial literacy score plunged to 48.3%. That's a 9.0% drop over 11 years. The Jump$tart Coalition says that today 75% of young Americans are likely to lack the skills needed to make smart financial decisions.  Perhaps the answer can be found if we turn to the Federal Reserve and its arsenal of educational programs for K-12 financial literacy.

 

The Federal Reserve Bank’s  K-12 Educational Curriculum and Why it Fails

Some people might not be aware that the Federal Reserve Banks provide a wide range of educational resources, including lesson plans, online economic indicators for classroom use, and materials on personal finances. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco offers ten different resources, including interviews with economists and information about bank tours. The Economics in Person section features the above-mentioned interviews, where visitors might start by watching Mary C. Daly talk about the recent Great Recession. Moving on, teachers and students will enjoy the Open & Operating video. This 16-minute film is designed to teach young people about the operations of a central bank and how the bank responded to the events of
September 11th. The site is rounded out by a personal finance lesson plan and a link to the Federal Reserve Education Portal. 

The Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank also has created a K-12 Financial Literacy Curriculum to presumably meet K-12 Financial Literacy Core Curriculum Standards and is generous enough to scale its instruction to meet each of the grade levels. In fact, if we look at the websites of all the Reserve Banks, we seem to get ample resources to financial literacy. But what is missing? What do all the curricula have in common? They all basically talk about how the system is totally fair and that if you work hard and put away your money little by little, you will grow rich. If you don’t, you will be poor. But this totally falls flat in the face of all the evidence that we see around us that screams that the system is rigged.  So if you are getting your instruction from the media and  from the supposedly trustworthy government, you will never grow rich. Where can you get this information from? How do you figure out what’s actually going on?  How do you figure out what’s going on if these curricula don’t teach you about the corruption within the Fed?  How do you learn from the Fed how you can make money if it keeps secret its own network of deceit?  How do you know what’s going on if you don’t know that the Federal Reserve is a byproduct of the greatest controversy: the successful realization of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908 which ultimately put a central bank under banker control instead of public control despite the efforts of William Jennings and others nearly a century back. Why is this information unfamiliar to you as you read this? Shouldn't this fact get covered in  Financial Literacy, or in Social Studies, or in Math? Wasn’t this supposed to get covered in the K12 Common Core Standards of your education somewhere before you graduated High School?

 

The Federal Reserve’s Conflict of Interests

The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG. 

On, July 21, 2011, the first top-to-bottom audit of the Federal Reserve uncovered eye-popping new details about how the U.S. provided a whopping $16 trillion in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks and businesses during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. An amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders to the Wall Street reform law, Dodd-Frank Bill passed which was passed almost exactly a year before on July 21, 2010 directed the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study. Importantly, Ben Bernanke, Allan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and the audit itself ended up being watered down. Despite this, “as a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world," said Sanders. "This is a clear case of socialism for the rich and rugged, you're-on-your-own individualism for everyone else."

Among the investigation's key findings is that the Fed unilaterally provided trillions of dollars in financial assistance to foreign banks and corporations from South Korea to Scotland, according to the GAO report. "No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president," Sanders said.  The non-partisan, investigative arm of Congress also determined that the Fed lacks a comprehensive system to deal with conflicts of interest, despite the serious potential for abuse.  In fact, according to the report, the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.

 

The Fed’s Ultimate Conflict of Interest: its Incestuous Relationship with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan

Goldman is politically connected in a way that no other company in America really is. And they've had a hand, really, in a variety of financial disasters over the last two decades. Goldman has repeatedly been involved in creations of speculative INTERNET, HOUSING, and COMMODITIES bubbles on Wall Street and continually walks away with fines and no admission of criminal wrongdoing, which emboldens the company to continually get into these schemes. It's a Con a Confidence game: They avoid exposing the inner workings of the company when they settle and don't have to go to trial, and avoid public testimony, being put under oath and explain how the deals work. The public never finds this out before graduating High School and would be lucky to ever learn about it. However, you can be sure the *best MBA Business Programs in the U.S.A teach their students all about it.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who’s Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

Who is in the Obama administration, from Goldman Sachs? Well, the number two guy at the Treasury, Mark Patterson, is a former Goldman Sachs employee. You know, there are people in the Obama administration who are very close to Robert Rubin, who used to be a head of Goldman Sachs. Timothy Geithner is a former Rubin aide, and he's the head of the Treasury. The head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler—they're the people who regulate commodities—he's a former Goldman Sachs banker. Goldman employees and their relatives contributed almost a million dollars to Barack Obama's presidential campaign — making it "the company from which Obama raised the most money in 2008" — and Loyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman,  has visited the White House ten times as of February 2011

So is it any wonder that after Goldman Sach’s extortion of trillions of dollars from the United States and the world through its housing bubble racketeering, Goldman settled a civil fraud case for less than $550 million, less than it reportedly expected, and with no admission of criminal wrongdoing. While the SEC hailed the $550 million settlement as the largest in Wall Street history, many outside analysts questioned why the government didn't demand more. Investors responded favorably as Goldman Sachs shares jumped by five percent in late trading, adding far more to the firm's market value than the amount it will have to pay in the settlement.

A Senate committee has laid out the evidence for their criminal behavior. Now the Justice Department should bring criminal charges but what are the chances that it will. Especially if Blankfein, the CEO, is regularly visiting the Whitehouse to give Obama advice, which he did eleven times last year.

They weren't murderers or anything; they had merely stolen more money than most people can rationally conceive of, from their own customers, in a few blinks of an eye. But then they went one step further. They came to Washington, took an oath before Congress, and lied about it. Thanks to an extraordinary investigative effort by a Senate subcommittee that unilaterally decided to take up the burden the criminal justice system has repeatedly refused to shoulder, we now know exactly what Goldman Sachs executives like Lloyd Blankfein and Daniel Sparks lied about. We know exactly how they and other top Goldman executives, including David Viniar and Thomas Montag, defrauded their clients. America has been waiting for a case to bring against Wall Street. Here it is, and the evidence has been gift-wrapped and left at the doorstep of federal prosecutors, evidence that doesn't leave much doubt: Goldman Sachs should stand trial. But the mountain of evidence collected against Goldman by Levin's small, 15-desk office of investigators — details of gross, bald-faced fraud delivered up in such quantities as to almost serve as a kind of sarcastic challenge to the curiously impassive Justice Department — stands as the most important symbol of Wall Street's aristocratic impunity and prosecutorial immunity produced since the crash of 2008. But Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. Thus, while much of the Levin report describes past history, the Goldman section describes an ongoing  crime — a powerful, well-connected firm, with the ear of the president and the Treasury, that appears to have conquered the entire regulatory structure and stands now on the precipice of officially getting away with one of the biggest financial crimes in history. But when is the last time you learned or your children learned about Goldman Sachs and this dark side of investment banking and central banks in school?

 

Secrets are Power

The reason K12  curriculum fails is because you're never taught to see the big picture. Academic Curriculum is kept in silos of fragmented isolated data. It is only when data is presented in a coherent manner that it becomes information. The more you carve up the story into individual arbitrary subjects the less of a Big Picture is shown. And that's the way “they” want it. However, thanks to the internet, our culture has reached a tipping point, we now have access to data online so it is becoming impossible for “them” to keep their secrets. If you can understand things in relationship to each other and in context then finally “they” will lose the power they have over us. We won't be intimidated by “their” wealth anymore.  An interdisciplinary approach to learning allows you to see things in context, connect the dots, and see the big picture. This is the value of the Educational CyberPlayGround  Financial Literacy Curriculum.

As more and more people awaken, like the Red Pills in The Matrix, to discover that they have been commodified, dehumanized, chopped, bundled, bought, and sold as means to grow Corporate capital, that they are the product used as fuel for a reckless financial bubble to enrich the 1%, these same people are being politically radicalized, and embracing the persona, and the narrative, of revolution.

How to Get Rich: To Get Rich, an Educated Citizenry Must:

1) REMEMBER THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT LITERACY SKILL IS KNOWING HOW TO READ BETWEEN THE LINES.

2) THE MOST IMPORTANT THINKING SKILL IS NOT TO TRUST EVERYTHING YOU READ BUT TO RESEARCH AND CHECK THE FACTS FOR YOURSELF.

3) Curriculum must be taught with an interdisciplinary point of view. 
You must be able to learn about something in context in order to see the big picture, otherwise it is only a bunch of fragmented pieces of data--NOT INFORMATION--only good for keeping knowledge secret.

The Golden Rule: Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

THERE ARE NO RULES FOR THE RICH,
THERE ARE ONLY RULES FOR EVERYONE ELSE

 

OBVIOUS EXAMPLES OF HOW THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED FOR THE RICH

The capital gains tax is one of the most lucrative perks in the tax code for wealthy Americans, with half of all capital gains flowing to the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers, according to the Washington Post. The way you get rich in this world is not by working hard,” said Marty Sullivan, an economist and a contributing editor to Tax Analysts. “It’s by owning large amounts of assets and having those things appreciate in value.”

UNGRADUATED TAXES. Bankers on Wall Street pay lower tax rates than most car mechanics. When Warren Buffet released his tax information, we learned that with taxable income of $39 million, he paid $6.9 million in taxes last year, a tax rate of about 17.4%.
Most of Buffet's income, it seems, was taxed as either "carried interest" (i.e. hedge-fund income) or long-term capital gains, both of which carry 15% tax rates, half of what many of the Zucotti park protesters will pay. As for the banks, as companies, we've all heard the stories. Goldman, Sachs in 2008-- this was the same year the bank reported $2.9 billion in profits, and paid out over $10 billion in compensation – paid just $14 million in taxes, a 1% tax rate.  Bank of America last year paid not a single dollar in taxes—in fact, received a “tax credit” of $1 billion. There are a slew of troubled companies that will not be paying taxes for years, including Citigroup and CIT.  When GM bought the finance company AmeriCredit, it was able to marry its long-term losses to AmeriCredit's revenue stream, creating a tax windfall worth as much as $5 billion. So even though AmeriCredit is expected to post earnings of $8-$12 billion in the next decade or so, it likely won't pay any taxes during that time, because its revenue will be offset by GM's losses.

CHRONYISM

60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft reports that members of Congress can legally trade stock based o non-public information from Capitol Hill. Washington, D.C. is a town that runs on inside information - but should our elected officials be able to use that information to pad their own pockets? As Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate. 

RECAP

Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them. All of this paints a disturbing picture of a closed and corrupt system, a timeless circle of friends that virtually guarantees a collegial approach to the policing of high finance.  But even beyond that, the system is skewed by the irrepressible pull of riches and power. If talent rises in the SEC or the Justice Department, it sooner or later jumps ship for those fat NBA contracts. Or, conversely, graduates of the big corporate firms take sabbaticals from their rich lifestyles to slum it in government service for a year or two. Many of those appointments are inevitably hand-picked by lifelong stooges for Wall Street like Chuck Schumer, who has accepted $14.6 million in campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other major players in the finance industry, along with their corporate lawyers. As for President Obama, what is there to be said?  He put a Citigroup executive in charge of his economic transition team, and he just named an executive of JP Morgan Chase, the proud owner of $7.7 million in Chase stock, his new chief of staff. His Treasury Secretary was one of the key figures in the move to deregulate investment banks.

WHAT THE OFFICIAL FEDERAL RESERVE CURRICULM FAILS TO INCLUDES

What An Educated Citizenry Must Know. Techniques that actually teach you about how to get rich, and build wealth.

Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908, the Prescott Bush Decentralized Bank, as well as the key roles of the Brown Brothers, Harriman, Rockefeller, Morgan and Schwab among others in this country’s financial history.

 

So Here is the Real Story of How Money Works and Who Calls and has Always Called the Shots

ROYALTY, DRUGS AND MONEY is about  the historic connections between England,  Hong Kong, America, Yale University, France, Germany, Taiwan, Japan, American Virgin Islands, Russia and more which explains how Bankers rule all these countries today. This brings us to the basics of how the world really works. 

This book and the web resources contained on the Educational CyberPlayGround site it’s on teaches us about the first American families of wealth – how they got it – and  the networked  family dynasties who were appointed and anointed which are now the .5%: The Banksters, Secret Societies, Fraternities and Sororities, the elite insiders who can pay to play; have managed to keep their family history private.