Financial Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Financial Media Articles in Major Media

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For further exploration, delve into our comprehensive Banking Corruption Information Center.

Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

Inside the humdrum offices of a tiny trading firm called Tradeworx, workers ... tend high-speed computers that typically buy and sell 80 million shares a day. But on the afternoon of May 6, as the stock market began to plunge in the “flash crash,” someone here walked up to one of those computers and typed the command HF STOP: sell everything and shutdown. Across the country, several of Tradeworx’s counterparts did the same. In a blink, some of the most powerful players in the stock market — high-frequency traders — went dark. The result sent chills through the financial world. After the brief 1,000-point plunge in the stock market that day, the growing role of high-frequency traders in the nation’s financial markets is drawing new scrutiny. Over the last decade, these high-tech operators have become sort of a shadow Wall Street — from New Jersey to Kansas City, from Texas to Chicago. Depending on whose estimates you believe, high-frequency traders account for 40 to 70 percent of all trading on every stock market in the country. Some of the biggest players trade more than a billion shares a day. These are short-term bets. Very short. The founder of Tradebot, in Kansas City, Mo., told students in 2008 that his firm typically held stocks for 11 seconds. Tradebot, one of the biggest high-frequency traders around, had not had a losing day in four years, he said.

Note: For key reports on the dubious practices which underlay the financial crisis and the impoverishment of the public treasury, click here.

G.D.P. is an index of a country’s entire economic output — a tally of, among many other things, manufacturers’ shipments, farmers’ harvests, retail sales and construction spending. It’s a figure that compresses the immensity of a national economy into a single data point of surpassing density. The conventional feeling about G.D.P. is that the more it grows, the better a country and its citizens are doing. [But] it has been a difficult few years for G.D.P. For decades, academics and gadflies have been critical of the measure, suggesting that it is an inaccurate and misleading gauge of prosperity. What has changed more recently is that G.D.P. has been actively challenged by a variety of world leaders, especially in Europe, as well as by a number of international groups, like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The G.D.P. ... has not only failed to capture the well-being of a 21st-century society but has also skewed global political objectives toward the single-minded pursuit of economic growth. Which indicators are the most suitable replacements for, or most suitable enhancements to, G.D.P. Should they measure educational attainment or employment? Should they account for carbon emissions or happiness?

Note: Which is more important, the economic prosperity of a people, or the well being and level of happiness?

More than a year and a half after Iceland's major banks failed, all but sinking the country's economy, police have begun rounding up a number of top bankers while other former executives and owners face a $US2 billion ($2.24 billion) lawsuit. Since Iceland's three largest banks - Kaupthing, Landsbanki and Glitnir - collapsed in late 2008, their former executives and owners have largely been living untroubled lives abroad. But the publication last month of a parliamentary inquiry into the island nation's profound financial and economic crisis signalled a turning of the tide, laying much of the blame for the downfall on the former bank heads who had taken "inappropriate loans from the banks" they worked for. Overnight, the administrators of Glitnir's liquidation announced they had filed a $US2 billion lawsuit in a New York court against former large shareholders and executives for alleged fraud. "I think this lawsuit is without precedence in Iceland," Steinunn Gudbjartsdottir, who chairs Glitnir's so-called winding-up board, told reporters in Reykjavik. The bank also said it was "taking action against its former auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for facilitating and helping to conceal the fraudulent transactions engineered by [its principal shareholder] and his associates, which ultimately led to the bank's collapse in October 2008."

Note: Yet American and British bankers who played a major role in the economic collapse are getting record pay. For an incisive article in Rolling Stone titled "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?" click here. For key reports on financial fraud from major media sources, click here.

Even the world’s most savvy stock-market giants (e.g., Warren E. Buffett) have warned over the past decade that derivatives are the fiscal equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. And the consequences of such an explosion would make the recent global financial and economic crisis seem like penny ante. But generously lubricated lobbyists for the unrestricted, unsupervised derivatives markets tell congressional committees and government regulators to butt out. While banks all over the world were imploding and some $50 trillion vanished in global stock markets, the derivatives market grew by an estimated 65 percent, according the Bank for International Settlements. BIS convenes the world’s 57 most powerful central bankers in Basel, Switzerland, for periodic secret meetings. Occasionally, they issue a cry of alarm. This time, derivatives had soared from $414.8 trillion at the end of 2006 to $683.7 trillion in mid-2008 - 18 months’ time. The derivatives market is now estimated at $700 trillion. What’s so difficult to understand about derivatives? Essentially, they are bets for or against the house - red or black at the roulette wheel. Or betting for or against the weather in situations in which the weather is critical (e.g., vineyards). Forwards, futures, options and swaps form the panoply of derivatives. Credit derivatives are based on loans, bonds or other forms of credit. Over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives are contracts that are traded and privately negotiated directly between two parties, outside of a regular exchange. All of this is unregulated.

Note: Though not from one of the top U.S. newspapers, this incisive article lays bare severe market manipulations that greatly endanger our world. The entire article is highly recommended. $700 trillion is equivalent to $100,000 for every man, woman, and child in the world! Do you think the financial industry is out of control? For lots more powerful, reliable information on major banking manipulations, click here. For a powerful analysis describing just how crazy things have gotten and giving some rays of hope by researcher David Wilcock, click here.

A day after a harrowing plunge in the stock market, federal regulators were still unable on Friday [May 7] to answer the one question on every investor’s mind: What caused that near panic on Wall Street? The cause or causes of the market’s wild swing remained elusive, leaving what amounts to a $1 trillion question mark hanging over the world’s largest, and most celebrated, stock market. The initial focus of the investigations appeared to center on the way a growing number of high-speed trading networks interact with one another and with venerable exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange. Most investors are unaware that these competing systems have fractured the traditional marketplace and have displaced exchanges like the Big Board as the dominant force in stock trading. In a joint statement issued after the close of trading, the S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said they were ... looking particularly closely at how different trading rules on different exchanges, which temporarily halted trading on some markets while activity in the same stocks continued on other markets, might have contributed to the problem. The pressure in the less-liquid markets was amplified by the computer-driven trades, which led still other traders to pull back.

Note: For more information on the impact of the new high-speed computer-driven trading methods, click here.

Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do – that is, if they pay taxes at all. The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion. How did this happen? It's complicated. GE in effect consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else – maker of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like – would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a standalone company. It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5 billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas income indefinitely. It's the tax benefit of overseas operations that is the biggest reason why multinationals end up with lower tax rates than the rest of us.

Note: Forbes later changed the title of this article to a more innocuous "What The Top U.S. Companies Pay In Taxes." Can you believe that GE not only pays no taxes, they actually get credit from the US government? They ship US jobs overseas and then reap huge tax benefits as a result. What's wrong with this picture? For a wealth of media news articles on the hidden manipulations of major financial corporations, click here.

On top of everything Lehman Brothers did before it collapsed in 2008, nearly toppling the financial system, it now seems that it was aggressively massaging its books. A new report on the Lehman collapse, released last week ... would leave anyone dumbstruck by the firm’s audacity — and reminded of the crying need for adult supervision of Wall Street. The 2,200-page report [finds that] Lehman engaged in transactions that let it temporarily shift troubled assets off its books and in so doing, hide its reliance on borrowed money. The maneuvers ... made the firm appear healthier than it was. [The author, Anton R. Valukas, a former federal prosecutor,] wrote that Richard S. Fuld Jr., Lehman’s former chief executive, was “at least grossly negligent,” and that Lehman executives engaged in “actionable balance sheet manipulation.” According to the report, rating agencies, government regulators and Lehman’s board of directors had no clue about the gimmicks. The result is that we were all blindsided. And we could be blindsided again. Congress is not even close to passing meaningful regulatory reform. The surviving banks have only gotten bigger and more politically powerful. If the Valukas report is not a wake-up call, what would be?

Note: The Lehman report is described in detail here. For revealing information showing how the US Treasury Department continues to fight against a much-needed audit of the Federal Reserve, click here. For a great collection of revealing reports from reliable sources on the hidden realities behind the financial crisis and government bailouts of the biggest financial corporations, click here.

The [IRS] reports that the nation's 400 highest-earning households reported an average income of $345 million in 2007 — up 31% from 2006 — and that their average tax bill fell to a 15-year low. Bloomberg writes that the elite 400's average income more than doubled that year from $131.1 million in 2001, the year Congress adopted tax cuts urged by then-President George W. Bush. Each household in the top 400 of earners paid an average tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest since the agency began tracking the data in 1992. Their average effective tax rate was about half the 29.4 percent in 1993, the first year of President Bill Clinton's administration. The top 400 earners received a total $138 billion in 2007, up from $105.3 billion a year earlier. On an inflation-adjusted basis, their average income grew almost fivefold since 1992. Almost three-quarters of the highest earners' income was in capital gains and dividends taxed at a 15 percent rate set as part of Bush-backed tax cuts in 2003.

Note: For key reports from major media sources on income inequality, click here. And for a powerful summary of 10 top corporations which avoided taxes in most egregious ways, see the excellent list compiled by independent U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders at this link.

Bailouts and bonuses have many Americans frustrated with big banks. Some consumers think these giant institutions have lost touch with customers and basic good business practices. They're so fed up that they're holding these behemoths accountable by moving their money to community banks. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post is spearheading a campaign called Move Your Money, which encourages people to move from the banking giants to smaller community banks. "There's a lot of anger about the way banks have acted," says Huffington. "It's a total lack of empathy and concern." The group's Facebook page has more than 27,000 fans. "I think it's already an enormous success," says Huffington. "The fact that people are considering it; the fact that people are doing it; the fact that people are feeling empowered."

Note: Please consider going local and supporting credit unions and community banks. For information on moving your checking and savings accounts from profit oriented banks to membership run credit unions, click here and here.

Embroiled in its debt crisis and looking for any avenue to bolster tax receipts [Greece] has done the unthinkable – it has made [cash, in euros] illegal for transactions over 1,500 euros. Of course, larger credit- or debit-based electronic transactions over 1,500 will still be denominated in euros. However, electronic transactions clearly require infrastructure and limit personal freedom. From Reuters: “From 1. Jan. 2011, every transaction above 1,500 euros between natural persons and businesses, or between businesses, will not be considered legal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards.” It seems wrong for the Greek state to dictate how cash euros can be used. In fact, it’s surprising that the EU-endorsed plan would allow Greece to control euro usage at that level. Despite the fact that the reform bill is a piece of an approved EU plan to help improve Greek tax revenue and reduce deficit, it seems to go too far in curtailing personal liberty. How much is a government willing to punish its own citizens for using “too much” of their own legal tender in an otherwise legal transaction?

Note: What gives any government the right to limit cash transactions? And why is the EU approving this unusual measure? Could this be part of a hidden agenda to push the public towards a cashless society?

Mark Pittman, an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News ... filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Federal Reserve Board, seeking the details of its unprecedented efforts to funnel money to the collapsing banks of Wall Street. That was in September 2008. Just more than a year later, Mr. Pittman ... died unexpectedly at age 52. But his cause has persevered. It is now known as Bloomberg L.P. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, an attempt to unlock the vault of the largest Wall Street rescue plan in decades — or, as the legal briefs put it, to “break down a wall of secrecy” that the Fed has kept in place for nearly two years in its “controversial use of public money to prop up financial institutions.” The Federal Reserve has wrapped itself in secrecy since the turn of the 20th century, when a select group of financiers met at the private Jekyll Island Club off the eastern coast of Georgia and, forgoing last names to preserve their anonymity among the staff, drafted legislation to create a central bank. Its secrecy, of course, persists today, with Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, refusing to tell even Congress which banks received government money under the bailout. There is also a heated battle to force the Fed to disclose its role in the controversial attempt to save the insurance giant American International Group.

Note: Isn't it interesting that Pittman died at age 52 while trying to expose manipulations of the big bankers? For a one-minute video proving the existence of a secret weapon which can cause an undetectable heart attack, click here. For a concise, excellent background on the hidden role of the Federal Reserve, click here.

If you want to encourage the kind of conspiracy theories that have prospered in the wake of last year’s financial crisis — those that describe a secret cabal of elites running the world — try doing the following: Have a group of 30 high-powered economists, government officials and bankers meet under the auspices of an international group that shares ideas on how to run the global financial architecture. Have your Board of Trustees led by an influential former Federal Reserve chairman who’s now working as a senior advisor to the president of the United States. Name the former vice chairman of bailout behemoth AIG as the group’s Chairman and CEO (It helps that he [is] former governor of the Bank of Israel). Ensure that membership includes the likes of these: A former Treasury Secretary and president of Harvard who also now works as a top presidential economic advisor; Citigroup’s senior vice chairman; a former IMF deputy managing director and the current governor of the Bank of Israel; and top representatives of the world’s four most important central banks. Hold two days of closed-door meetings at the New York Fed. Do not publicize a list of attendees and leave everyone guessing about the agenda. These were the circumstances surrounding Friday’s start to the 62nd plenary meetings of the Group of 30, whose formal name is “The Consultative Group on International Economic and Monetary Affairs, Inc.”

Note: The article interestingly then goes on to claim that this secret meeting of the world's top bankers is not really anything to worry about, that they are really working for the public good. If so, why not have the meeting open and widely covered by the press? For many other revealing articles from major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people in our world, click here.

Twice a year, the chairmen and chief executives of Europe's biggest banks gather in secret. They meet under the auspices of a hush-hush club formed after World War II, whose operations are so mysterious that even the grandees who attend it seem unclear what it's really called. One bank supremo told me its name was the Instituts d'Etudes Financieres ... another that it went by the moniker IIEB. Either way, what I can tell you is that it attracts a pretty high calibre of banker - and that its last meeting was just a few weeks ago at the plush London hotel, Claridges, where the main item on the agenda was the topical question of bankers' bonuses. Present were ... Stephen Green of HSBC, Philip Hampton of RBS, Marcus Agius of Barclays and David Mayhew of JP Morgan Cazenove, and their counterparts from Germany, Italy, France and so on. Now, let's be clear: the idea that banks would ever collude to solve a mutual problem would be an outrageous and unwarranted slur. That said, they would dearly love a collective agreement to cease hostilities on bankers' pay, because they know there is a one-to-one correlation between each million pound bonus they pay and damage to their reputations. But although they explored whether they could reach an entente on capping bankers' pay, they abandoned the ambition as a hopeless cause. Why? Because they can't get the Americans into the room. So what is the going rate for RBS's top profit generators? Last year, when the bonus pool was Ł900m [over $1.3 billion] for the investment bank, several hundred of its executives earned more than a million pounds each. [This year] quite a number of its top traders will be expecting $10m plus.

Note: You can bet that the money for this year's bonuses is coming out of taxpayers' pockets through the huge bailouts. So here is yet another secret meeting of the world's top bankers not being reported in the major media except for this BBC blog. For many other revealing articles from major media reports on secret societies and secret meetings of the most rich and powerful people in our world, click here.

Goldman Sachs defended a range of trading practices currently under regulatory scrutiny, including dark pools and short selling, in a report to the Securities and Exchange Commission and a series of postings on its Web site. In defending dark pools, private venues where large blocks of securities are traded anonymously, Goldman said they are simply the result of technology improving on the kind of non-displayed liquidity that has always existed in the market. Dark pools have been criticized by lawmakers and targeted by regulators seeking a better idea of how much trading takes place away from exchanges. While it reiterated its support for regulation of abusive, or "naked" short selling, Goldman said further regulation isn't necessary and could actually hurt the market. As for high-frequency trading, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro at a Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association conference ... reiterated that she has asked SEC staff to propose ways the agency can collect more information about high frequency traders, noting that lightning speed trading now represents more than 50% of trading volume.

Note: To read this article without a subscription to the WSJ, click here. Is it a surprise that Goldman Sachs wants to keep its secret deals hidden? Full transparency for the banks would almost certainly reveal major manipulations.

The Obama administration [has said] that the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that just ended was $1.4 trillion, nearly a trillion dollars greater than the year before and the largest shortfall relative to the size of the economy since 1945. The shortfall for the fiscal year 2009, which ended Sept. 30, translates to 10 percent of the economy, according to a joint statement from the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter R. Orszag. For the 2008 fiscal year, the deficit of $459 billion was 3.2 percent of the economy, as measured by the gross domestic product. At 10 percent of the gross domestic product, the 2009 deficit is the highest since the end of World War II, when it was 21.5 percent. The overall national debt, which is the accumulation of annual deficits, is nearly $12 trillion, and projected deficits for the next decade will add an estimated $9 trillion more. Administration officials say two-thirds of that is due to Bush administration policies.

Note: The current debt of $12 trillion equals $40,000 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. Most of the increased deficit is due to the government bailout of the biggest Wall Street banks and investment houses. For lots more on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

No one, including himself, would argue that Bradley Birkenfeld, 44, is a saint. But at the same time, almost no one in the U.S. government would deny that Birkenfeld was absolutely essential to its landmark tax-evasion case against Swiss banking giant UBS. The former UBS employee turned whistle-blower exposed the previously hidden world of offshore tax shelters, which cheats the Treasury out of about $100 billion a year. Thanks to his insider information, UBS was fined $780 million, and it promised to "exit entirely" from the U.S. tax-shelter business and to provide the names of thousands of American tax dodgers, from which hundreds of millions of dollars still might be collected. It also led to new tax treaties with the Swiss that should provide unprecedented tax information in civil cases and better access to such data in criminal cases. Considering Birkenfeld's help, many observers wonder why the Justice Department decided to arrest and prosecute him. Many critics believe the decision to prosecute Birkenfeld, whom some consider the most important whistle-blower in years, sends the worst possible message to other financial-industry insiders who might be considering coming forward. The Government Accountability Project (GAP), a Washington watchdog organization that has extensive whistle-blower experience, says a chilling effect is already apparent: a senior executive at a European bank that offers similar U.S. tax shelters is having second thoughts about going public because of the Birkenfeld case.

Note: For lots more, including Obama's tight ties with UBS, see the New York Daily News article here.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar. Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars. The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets. The Americans ... are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security." This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy.

Note: The publication of this article caused the value of the dollar to fall and the price of gold to rise worldwide. For important ideas on how to reform the role of money in the world, click here.

Two weeks before his movie "Capitalism: A Love Story" opens nationwide, filmmaker Michael Moore swept through San Francisco ... with a rally, a Commonwealth Club appearance and an unlikely new antagonist: Democrats. When Moore criticized Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., this week on NBC's "The Jay Leno Show" for getting "sweetheart loans" from a mortgage company he was charged with overseeing, Moore said he got a call from a top Democratic Party official telling him to "back off." But Moore, a longtime supporter of a single-payer health plan, didn't back off. In an interview with The Chronicle, he chided House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for not being aggressive enough in pushing health care reform and ripped President Obama's financial team as "the foxes guarding the henhouse." There is plenty of conservative-bashing in the film, which focuses on capitalism as the "evil" at the root of the financial crisis, but the film also refers to Democratic leaders as the "deliverymen" of the government bailouts for financially troubled Wall Street firms. In his new film, Moore focuses on the investment house Goldman Sachs as a main beneficiary of capitalism's largesse. He notes that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and senior White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers are proteges of Robert Rubin, longtime Goldman executive and President Bill Clinton's Treasury secretary. "The fact that Geithner and Summers are part of this administration makes everything that happens open to question and needs our vigilance," Moore said, "because, literally now, the foxes are guarding the henhouse."

Note: For a review of Michael Moore's new film, "Capitalism: a Love Story," click here.

Any time corporate executives and directors are heavily selling their company's stock there's reason for concern. And lately they've been doing just that. The last time insider selling was as high as it is now was in the period from late 2006 to late 2007. It was right after that insider-selling surge that the stock market began its long painful decline, says Charles Biderman, CEO of TrimTabs, an independent institutional research firm. Biderman believes that insider trades shoot higher when there's a disconnect between broad market opinions and what business executives feel in their gut. "When [insiders think] things are going better than most people think, they buy stock," he says. "When things are going worse than people think, they sell." That's to say, insiders have no crystal ball but they often have access to up-to-the-minute sales data as well as firsthand impressions from their sales managers — and that gives them an inside track on what's happening in the economy. When this special access leads them to be big sellers of their stock, well, it's a vote of no confidence in their employer's near-term future. Biderman has measured the ratio of insider selling to buying since 2004, and says historically the ratio is 7 to 1. (Insiders almost always sell more than they buy because they receive stock as part of their compensation.) Right now the ratio is 30, one of the highest he's recorded. November 2007 is the last time the ratio even came close, at 24.

Note: According to the New York Times, insider trading levels are at the "highest levels since the firm started keeping numbers in 2004." Why does this Time article state they were higher in 2006 to 2007? For a treasure trove of revealing reports from reliable sources on the realities of the Wall Street bailout, click here.

PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour economics correspondent: As the Federal Reserve moved rapidly and radically last year to prevent what it feared was an economic meltdown, it bailed out some institutions, but not others, forced mergers, [and] created hundreds of billions of dollars. The net result: increased suspicion of the Fed itself. That's nothing new. The 1913 act of Congress that established America's central bank was ... a compromise between government ... and private banking interests, which owned the 12 regional Fed branches. [All along,] some Americans have been suspicious of the Fed for operating above politics, too close to bankers, and behind closed doors. Simply Google "Federal Reserve." You encounter everything from skepticism to fear of conspiracy. NARRATOR: With the power to regulate the money supply is also the power to bring entire economies and societies to its knees. DONALD KOHN, Federal Reserve vice chairman: We bring information to bear from the private sector, from foreign governments and foreign central banks that they tell us in confidence about what's going on in their businesses. WILLIAM GREIDER, author, "Secrets of the Temple": You could say, "We have to have our meetings in secret because things will be said that are national security secrets, but we'll vet the transcript and release it four weeks later." Why not do that? SOLMAN: A House bill ... would give the Government Accountability Office the right to audit the Fed's interest rate decisions. Chairman Bernanke opposes it as compromising the Fed's independence.

Note: If you look at the top of any U.S. currency, you will see the words "Federal Reserve Note." U.S. dollars are issued and controlled by the Federal Reserve, which is privately owned, though subject to minimal federal oversight. To see just how much control the Federal Reserve has over the issuance of U.S. currency, see their webpage at this link. For lots more on hidden manipulations of the Federal Reserve, click here.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.