Knowledge Creates Power: Alert: Soros and friends reorder global finance at new Bretton Woods

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Alert: Soros and friends reorder global finance at new Bretton Woods

While all the focus is now on the three-ring circus in Washington vis-a-vis passing the fiscal 2011 budget the Democrats failed to pass in 2010, up in New Hampshire this weekend at Bretton Woods, the Institute for New Economic Thinking is convening a very important conference, "CRISIS and RENEWAL: International Political Economy at the Crossroads."

It's no accident they're meeting on the very same site as the Bretton Woods Conference -- formally United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference -- that met from July 1-22, 1944, during World War II to plan the postwar financial world after the expected defeat of Germany and Japan.

That's because the purpose of this weekend's conference is to reorder world finance in the wake of the near-collapse of the global financial system in 2008. Like Bretton Woods, they must expect some new calamity, with winners and losers.

The groundwork was laid a year ago at INET's inaugural meeting at which George Soros teed off with his "Anatomy of Crisis - The Living History of Last 30 Years: Economic Theory, Politics and Policy."

"I am afraid," he said, "the current discussions miss the main point: namely that the recent financial crisis was not only a market failure but also a regulatory failure.

"And what matters now is not so much who regulates, but how. Regulators ought to undertake a course of critical self-examination - Chinese style."

Soros, by the way, is funding this initiative to the tune of $50 million whereby 200 academic, business and government policy leaders focus on "establishing new international rules" and "reform the currency system."

Maybe that's why President Obama is cool as a cucumber -- spending nearly a billion to invade Libya without breaking a sweat despite the fact we are broke, and skipping town to campaign for his 2012 re-election in the middle of tense budget negotiations.

Obama knows the world financial system is being reconfigured - "Chinese style." He may be reasoning that "George has got my back."

America is worn out from funding the world's needs, so now, lagging behind financially as a result, it's time to reorder the global financial order to reflect present-day economic realities.

And, boy have we shelled out the dough.

Just a week ago, on April Fool's no less, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke lost his two-year battle to protect "crisis-squeezed" banks from the "stigma" of having received "public loans" during the 2008 unraveling.

What was revealed is that foreign interests disproportionately benefited from American largesse - including local governments in Belgium, a Japanese fishing-cooperative financier and a company part-owned by the Central Bank of Libya.

Brussels and the Paris-based Dexia SA (DEXB) borrowed some $33.5 billion from the Fed's 97-year-old "discount window" lending program and Dublin-based Depfa Bank Plc (a German real-estate lender took it over in 2007, before it was seized by the German government), drew $24.5 billion.

At the peak of the crisis during the record surge in October 2008, 70 percent of the $110.7 billion borrowed went to foreign banks.

These disclosures - contained in Fed documents released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request - will surely prompt a re-examination of the risks U.S. taxpayers bear because of the Fed's role in global financial markets.

All the while, Americans can't get loans to start and/or invest in businesses or afford a home; two-thirds of consumers can't even afford to refinance their mortgages, often to avoid defaulting.

With Soros and company picking winners and losers - "Chinese style" - little wonder Donald Trump - as canny as they come, vis-a-vis America's global financial position - is surging in the polls among Republican presidential primary voters.

By Mary Claire Kendall who served as special assistant to the assistant secretary for health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, from 1989 to 1993.

SNEAK PEEK: PICTURES FROM GEORGE SOROS WEEKEND CONFERENCE TO ‘REARRANGE THE FINANCIAL ORDER’

As you read this, a four-day George Soros-funded conference featuring over 200 economists, finance experts, and scholars is underway in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire–the site of the 1944 meeting of world leaders that reordered the post-WWII economy by establishing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The purpose of this “new” Bretton Woods conference is “a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order,” to use Soros’ own words:

A new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the international financial architecture after World War II, is needed to establish new international rules, including treatment of financial institutions considered too big to fail and the role of capital controls. It would also have to reconstitute the International Monetary Fund to reflect better the prevailing pecking order among states and to revise its methods of operation.

In addition, a new Bretton Woods would have to reform the currency system. The postwar order, which made the U.S. more equal than others, produced dangerous imbalances. The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place.

The Blaze initially reported about this conference–and a second Soros-related conference aimed at remaking the world–here.

The four-day conference started this afternoon and is being sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), an organization with Soros ties.

The conference will have keynote addresses from Gordon Brown, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, and Larry Summers, the former director of the White House’s National Economic Council. Soros also will be on hand.

esterday, Fox News ran a story asking why media coverage of this event is so scant. That was a question on the mind of a New Hampshire resident who three days ago wrote a comment on the website of WMUR TV (a New Hampshire’s television network):

I find it really difficult to believe that my local news organization is NOT covering that George Soros, the Billionaire who is responsible for collapsing several countries’ economies, is right here… right now … in New Hampshire for implementation of “A new Bretton Woods conference,” which is like the one that established the international financial architecture after World War II. He says that this needed to establish new international rules…reconstitute the International Monetary Fund (IMF)…[and] to reform the currency system. This man is evil, he has the goal to collapse the currency in the United States of America, and the SOLE purpose of him being in NH right now is to meet with other world leaders to bring forth this mission.

So, I ask News9 … NH … WHY are you not covering this? Do you not think that the people in NH should be aware that this meeting is happening? Do you think that we would be angry, maybe protest their presence? Would you report that??

Though there seems to be little to no media coverage of the new Bretton Woods conference, The Blaze did find someone who was hanging around the conference site–Omni Mount Washington Resort–as the INET crew was setting up. This person snapped some pictures of posters being displayed there. The source noted that, “These [circle] posters are EVERYWHERE. It looks to me like an outline of the topics and talking points of the conference.”

Here are some posters featuring books that the conference seems to be promoting. These posters, according to our source, “are on display in the Hotels Conservatory where they [conference participants] will be having a cocktail hour tomorrow.”

And an image of the ballroom where the main events will occur:

If you go the conference’s website, you’ll find a schedule of events and some conference papers that will be presented.

By the way, to get a sense of the INET mission, watch the organization’s video, where one of the featured speakers observes, “If we‘re going to have a world that’s sustainable, that’s at peace, and that does promote justice and equity, we have to reinvent the economic model that prevails.”

Video: And Introduction to INET

Meanwhile, as rich and influential people at Bretton Woods run rough-shod over the economy, one reporter took to the streets of New York City to ask pedestrians what they would do to fix the economy. Some of their ideas, you’ll see, are better than others.