I decided to make this brief post so some of the folks that are following me don’t think I’ve died, or given up the ghost or the fight. I’m a voice amongst many, crying in the desert, and least likely to be heard than most, even if what I said was truth above others.  I’m currently working on a comprehensive article on economics basics, which is intended to provide self evident truths as criteria for examining the truths and evaluating our personal future, as well as the nation and the worlds.

The world situation isn’t improving, and no political action is making any changes toward achieving popular goals. You need to judge this not by what your read in the mainstream media, as they are the spokes-folks of the status quo, but examine your own personal prospects for the future, and by what’s going on around you in your daily world.

The world is owned and controlled by the financial community, and the governments are their servants, and they will do whatever it takes to keep their power. And they depend on keeping the public in the dark, and fomenting further ignorance, and mystery. Nothing will change for the public for a long time. They think they are at a point of no return, and they’ve won. But will as each starts taking specific action the pendulum will start swinging the other way. My upcoming article talks to that point. I’ve recently launched a call to withdraw from the larger banking institutions, and while I got words of support, I’ve received little actual feedback on results. But action needs to be expanded on that project, and you’ll hear more in the future.

Meanwhile, don’t let the powers get complacent by postponing your self education. Learn what you can, but don’t take people’s word for it; examine with your intelligence. If it doesn’t make sense, it probably hasn’t any; your lack of background training isn’t necessarily at fault.

We, the people, actually have the power to make the change in many very direct ways.

It is my pleasure to present an article that explains in common terms what’s really going on, and what can be expected:

Five Economic Storms Raging Now, by Martin D. Weiss, Ph.D.

What makes such type of report important is the clarity and self evidence of what is being stated. Only based on real fact, can citizen’s action be effective.

You can expect that IPPA  (we) will initiate some critical action no later than the end of June.

An important and witty disertation on populism by Jim Hightower,  to which my own article here, “An analysis of progressive politics, past, present, future” share related observations:

Read it at the Hightower Lowdown

Call to Action: Bust the Super-bank Monopolies

If your life is going well, and nothing is really wrong around you, then, you needn’t read any further. But if you are like me who see at times gradual, at times steep social and political decline which lessen people’s ability to live, then, join me in taking action; read on; take action and pass it on.

I held this letter back for several weeks to watch for further signs; I probably shouldn’t have. While Wall Street wallows in TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program) money, Main Street continues to struggle, lose jobs, and companies that haven’t closed down are operating on survival mode.

Despite the eloquence and the humanitarian and progressive speeches from the President, and all the support and positive press, the administration can’t seem to control the financial community (or doesn’t want to). TARP has been completely spent, and huge sums of it can’t be accounted for. (But they’re sure showing up as profits in their publicly released projections!) The Fed and banks have refused to detail amounts and how it was used; despite the presidential outrage at the bonuses, he still allowed a $500,000 cap. The excuse: reward productivity. They changed the meaning: Productivity should translate into benefit on behalf of the people served, not themselves and their corporations at the expense of the public. When they lost millions for the entire population how dare they call it productivity?

It is theft. The public stands firm: No bonuses. The financial community is an integral part of the disbursement of ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act). They will earn billions in contract fee for “managing and distributing the money” in compliance with ARRA. But we expect they will make it difficult, if not impossible, and they’ve already got included the necessary loopholes into the ARRA law, to reap the maximum advantage possible, plus any additional perks that can be slushed through their obscure accounting systems.

Take the “affordable housing” feature, where anyone stressed out to keep up with their mortgages, should be able to refinance down to around 4%, no fees. It’s one of the greatest things for the economy. Go to your local HUD office, and find out how in effect, most people do not qualify. More than 50% of home owners are already disqualified regardless of personal situation, if their mortgages aren’t owned by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae. Next, you need to be one month behind in payments to qualify. If you go past one month behind, you can’t qualify. Since I wrote this draft, they put up an expansion to the program to extend to people whose mortgages aren’t owned by Freddie and Fannie; I haven’t followed up to see whether it really works at this time; but history tends to repeat itself, particularly if it is the same people who did it before.

Where is the money to put people back to work in companies that have had to close because banks refused to make loans or renew their revolving credit? Business owners I’ve talked to have scaled their operations way back, and fear their inability to last another year and a half.

A recent law was passed to prevent abuses against credit card holders, where extra fees, and larger monthly minimum, and interest increases were put on people without notice, and without recourse. The law doesn’t become effective for another year… so the credit card companies can continue to fleece the public for yet another year.

And it goes on and on. All you need to do is test any of the projects and try to see if you can benefit from any of the wonderful programs. The financial community will benefit.

Whether the Administration can’t or doesn’t want to; therefore, they need public encouragement as expressed by the action through their money.

Action objective: To force the 4 Major Banks, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, and Chase, to break up into independent community banks.

1.    1. Forward this letter only to known friends to avoid getting this letter going into spam boxes. Also, send it out within two days. If it goes down to 9 layers at 5 letters each person, and no breaks in the network, the network will build up to about 2 million at the 9^th level. Assume breaks of 50%, so it should take some 100 people at the top level to eventually reach about 50% of the population, and if only half actually do the next steps, it maybe large enough numbers to force the break up.

2.          There are many people who don’t yet have email accounts. These should be notified verbally. Tell your friends.

3.     2.  Take all financial assets, checking and savings accounts you have in any of the above banks. Don’t close the accounts, keep enough to last a month or two in services charges, and ask for paper statements. (There maybe a cost in withdrawing certain types of accounts. We don’t want people to lose money in the process, so decide what you can endure losing.)

4.     3.  Move it to local-community banks. Do check the community bank to ensure it is not owned by a huge Super-bank.

Talk about doing this has been circulating on line, for about a month. I think this is a way to help implement. If every one that participates sends his within two days, and take action by late, we should see enough numbers to see some reaction. What can happen? If tens of millions move their funds the super-banks will feel it, and the results are likely to make the mainstream media. If nothing is heard, the action was inadequate or the network didn’t reach its goals due to breakdown. In either case, future action can be better planned.

Well honed in this method of action should get more immediate action from any administration or Congress. The result of this initial action will help better organized future “vote with your money” protests which WILL produce real change. The people must be heard.

In consonance with the philosophy expressed in today policy and strategy statement:

An analysis of progressive politics, past, present, future what was until recently “The National Progressive Party” is now the “International Progressive Alliance.”

However, the change only expands its purpose and activities, and does not change any of that which is contained in the “Current & up-to Date Party Status and Policy” section.”

Read the contents in that section, and write us about possible ways you might want to be part of this project.

(Posted as a comments to Open Left, article by Chris Bowers) All the facts are inconclusive, and probably intended to entertain, and distract.

1.    The link provided for Geithner’s statement links to a Wall Street Journal article by “staff,” entitled, “Geithner’s Statement on Stress Test Results.” There isn’t a single piece of text in quotes which would indicate Geithner’s actual words; so when Chris provided that link he must have done it as a tongue in cheek sarcasm.

2.     A couple of hours’ search I found the deepest level of detail in this statement found in Market Watch:

According to the methodology, the 19 banks were asked to project estimated losses on loans, mortgage securities and other packaged products, including off-balance sheet positions estimated for 2009 and 2010 based on the adverse forecast in a “stressed economic environment.” They were instructed to project losses for 12 different categories of loans and securitized loans. (Market Watch)

3.    Given that accounting methods are questionable, and significantly based on “professional” interpretation, the stress test results are inconclusive, and appear to be no more than a PR campaign to shape perception on the right and center, and inject doubt amongst dissenters. (The hidden variables in accounting methodology are still in place: Mark-to-Market, Off balance sheet items. There are other lesser known book cooking techniques, which deal with spurious interpretations by “professionals.” In other words, “professional opinion.” Can we really go on that?)

4.     GDP calculation contains financial market trading, as well as all other real economy trading (buying/selling); in other words, purchases/sales in the financial market add to the GDP. So the GDP can be manipulated through lots of transactions between traders, and still means no bread on the table. This is like playing the monopoly table game, and everybody is broke, so the winner adds money to everyone’s account so trading can continue, but not enough money to give up its controlling lead, so without any real new production, the “economic activity” was expanded, but the real economy has continue to decrease. No new real products, more people unemployed, and so forth. At the peak of the bubble, the financial community contribution to the GDP was somewhere around 35-40%… Nothing is  produced; just lots of trading and gambling; makes activity look good in the numbers, but see where we ended up?

5.     One can’t help but conclude that this stress test and the entire process is Geithner’s prestidigitation to hypnotize the public, create the illusion of a recovery, and perpetuate the commonly believed fallacy that “we need to fix the financial markets so the economy recovers.” All the TARP (Troubled Assets Recovery Program) in the world isn’t going to effectively increase the real Gross Domestic Product by a single percentage; and by real I mean, physical goods, manufactured goods, tangible stuff. Until we see people going back to work, the rest is poppycock. It’s not a matter of pretending to understand the “stress Test” and whether it’s bullwhip. The simple economics 101 of the situation is that it does not take into account real information that would affect the economy as a whole.

6.    Approval figures have no economic or social value considering the reasons they were created in the first place, and the sampling groups. They are used to a) Suggest to people that they are on the wrong side of an issue; b) Inject doubt in the opposition; c) continue to blind the believers; and d) measure the effect of the media on the minds of people.

What would happen if the Open Left issued its own approval ratings for the administration officials, based on a methodology that calculated actual benefit and or damage to the nation and the people as a whole? What would happen if the sample groups were given the truth about what’s going on?

When new policy is adopted it will be written in a post which will be permanently listed under the heading of

Current & up-to Date Party Status and Policy.

(right hand column)

When it is first published it will also be announced as a blog post, such as this one, and a link provided to the new page.

The new organizational outline for action can be read in its entirety here:

Action Agenda for the Establishment of the National Progressive Party

Here you can find a list of site, people, organization which can be potential allies

Some Items of special important are written as “Pages” and shown in the side columns, and notices such as this one, is posted as a blog, by way of announcement.

The Case for a National and/or International Progressive Party

A permanent page has been added on the above captioned topic:

Take a look at: My Vision