http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-and-occupy-the-fed-are-two-sides-of-the-same-coin.html

Protests: Both Conservatives and Liberals Are Right … Just Looking at Different Sides of the Same Coin

Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the Fed Are Two Sides of the Same Coin

The Occupy Wall Street protests are obviously targeting Wall Street, i.e. the giant banks.

The Occupy the Fed protests – led by Alex Jones, the Oathkeepers and other conservatives – are targeting the Federal Reserve. *

While some are trying to weaken these two movements through a divide-and-conquer strategy, the truth is that they are two sides of the same coin.

Specifically, the corrupt, giant banks would never have gotten so big and powerful on their own. In a free market, the leaner banks with sounder business models would be growing, while the giants who made reckless speculative gambles would have gone bust. See this, this and this.

It is the Federal Reserve, Treasury and Congress who have repeatedly bailed out the big banks, ensured they make money at taxpayer expense, exempted them from standard accounting practices and the criminal and fraud laws which govern the little guy, encouraged insane amounts of leverage, and enabled the too big to fail banks – through “moral hazard” – to become even more reckless.

Indeed, the government made them big in the first place. As I noted in 2009:

As MIT economics professor and former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson points out today, the official White House position is that:

(1) The government created the mega-giants, and they are not the product of free market competition

***

(3) Giant banks are good for the economy

And given that the 12 Federal Reserve banks are private – see this, this and this – the giant banks have a huge amount of influence on what the Fed does. Indeed, the money-center banks in New York control the New York Fed, the most powerful Fed bank. Indeed, Jamie Dimon – the head of JP Morgan Chase – is a Director of the New York Fed.

Any attempt by the left to say that the free market is all bad and the government is all good is naive and counter-productive.

And any attempt by the right to say that we should leave the giant banks alone because that’s the free market are wrong.

The Federal Reserve and the giant banks are part of a single malignant, symbiotic relationship. Conservatives and liberals should unite in breaking up both.

* This is an over-simplification. In reality, many conservatives and people who would like to end the Fed are part of the Wall Street protests … and reining in the Fed is one of the central platforms of Occupy Wall Street.

Hedges is wrong about the origins of the Tea Party. I'm tired of this false history being repeated over and over. The RT interviewer had it right that the Tea Party had it's roots in the same problems outlined by the OWS group but with more of an emphasis on the FED as the root cause of our troubles than the corporations. The Tea Party started as a December fundraiser for Ron Paul. The man who organized it was also a 9/11 truther and got the idea from the truth movement demonstrations on December 15th (anniversary of the original Boston event) years prior. The Tea Party almost immediately started to be corrupted with mainline republicans just as this guy is trying to corrupt OWS as a mainline democratic event and eventually got funding from Koch brothers which put the nail in the coffin.

OOPS, My bad. I was so upset with his analysis of the Tea Party I didn't stay to listen to his wonderfully unifying words at the end. Thanks John, yes overall I agree, a good analysis.

Chris Hedges is actually very supportive of the Occupy Wall Street movement.  See http://www.gatheringspot.net/news-article/take-action-now/best-among-us 

As a journalist, author, and war correspondent, his reputation speaks for itself.  (You can find several more articles, posted on this forum, that Hedges has written by putting his name into the search box above.) 

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater lest we lose sight of what he is telling us.  Hedges' assessment of what America and the rest of the world is facing right now is alarmingly accurate.  The global economic system is on the verge of collapse and no one is going to bail us out. 

We must work together to be the change we seek.

Yes Noa-

Good point I rushed to judgement with his strong criticism of the Tea Party and didn't stay to hear his unifying words at the end. I've revised my statement above.

Sorry... I Must be getting a little stressed out tonight!!!

Deep breath....

Wendy

The Fed is the head of the snake.

http://www.bloomberg.com/data-visualization/federal-reserve-emergency-lending/#/overview/?sort=nomPeakValue&group=none&view=peak&position=0&comparelist=&search=

Couldn't agree more Wendy.  That's what I sensed after initially seeing the tea partiers as just another form of faux news hypnotised sheeple drones carrying out their MSM delivered instructions like lab rats under control of the laboratory mad scientists, LOL

Could we be witnessing the organic spontaneous higher vibration rumblings of true solidarity of the projected left and right after so much contrived polarization?

Hope so...  would be perfect for this moment in time...

but no matter what, I'm NOT EVER going to a Racing for Jesus Nascar event, LOL

This blogger makes some good points.  He is correct when he says, "The Federal Reserve and the giant banks are part of a single malignant, symbiotic relationship."  The relationship is so interwoven that it becomes difficult to distinguish who feeds whom.  Even Ralph Nader gets it wrong when he says the banks fund the Federal Reserve. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwIZ4syCFLc

The Federal Reserve Bank (with 12 branches) is at the top of the money food chain. All other American banks get their money (with interest due) from the central bank, the Federal Reserve.  The Fed bails out other banks, not the other way around.  The blogger references this fact here:  http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/i-n-s-o-l-v-e-n-t-citigroup-was-in-debt-to-the-fed-7-out-of-every-10-days-from-august-2007-through-april-2010.html  The confusion arises because these lesser banks (relative to the hierachy) are able to intiate consumer debt via bank loans and credit lines.  This debt is then submitted to the Federal Reserve bank, which creates the currency to cover the principle of these loans.  The Fed does not print the money for the interest, so there is always a shortage.

It's time we realize that central banks have the entire western world by the balls.  As one of the world's central banks, the Federal Reserve has the power to bring this country to its knees by controlling the amount of currency in circulation at any given time.  The Fed has created inflation and economic depressions by wielding this power since its inception in 1913. They've disguised this manipulation by calling it the "business cycle."  Because the Fed controls whether the economy experiences a bull or bear market, financiers privy to this information are able to profit by knowing where the market is headed before they invest.  These are only a few of their schemes to control the world's people by controlling the world's wealth.

You can learn more here:  http://www.gatheringspot.net/node/6777

Making this an argument about "liberals", "conservatives" or "two sides of the same coin"  is a divisive, diversionary tactic and it misses the underlying issue.   The Federal Reserve is more powerful than the US government or any bank on Wall Street because they control every facet of the money system.  Central banks rule the western world and they are on the fast track to taking over the rest of the globe because people don't understand how money works.

To break free of the matrix, we must first understand how it controls us.  Everything we need to know about how the money system works can be found here:  http://www.gatheringspot.net/node/6777  Now there's no excuse for not knowing the facts.  The system depends upon our ignorance.  Let's arm ourselves with knowledge so the Money Masters can't deceive us anymore.