As if the banks are not powerful enough already, the architects of the New World Order are now plotting to give them enough power to control virtually every aspect of the financial services industry, and thus manipulate the American people at will.

The new legislation will remove barriers implemented during the depression, allowing banks to engineer a new economic collapse, thereby gaining greater control over the people by placing them in debt.

They will be getting involved in the insurance and securities industries, including regulation, and could ultimately control the stock market.

They now will have the power to control our financial welfare, and Y2K will act as the perfect cover-up for such a scenario.

____________________________________________________________________

Fed chief backs GOP bank bill

WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan Thursday extended his public disagreement with the Clinton administration over the best approach to take in overhauling the nation's financial services laws.

As Congress began this year's debate on legislation to remove Depression-era barriers between banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies, Greenspan endorsed a bill proposed by House Banking Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, that would give the Federal Reserve more power over new financial activities.

Greenspan's remarks in testimony prepared for a Banking Committee hearing put him at odds again with the administration's top economic policymaker, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Both men support revamping the laws by letting banks, brokerages and insurers get more deeply into each other's businesses. Legislation to do that died in Congress last year after getting closer to passage than it had in many years.

Leach's bill "has chosen the appropriate structure to combine banking, securities and insurance firms (by) using financial service holding companies," Greenspan said.

The holding company requirement in the bill "serves to promote the safety and soundness and stability of our banking and financial system," he said.

On Wednesday, the administration threw its support behind a new, competing version of the financial overhaul legislation. That bill, proposed by Rep. John LaFalce of New York, the Banking Committee's senior Democrat, would lift the barriers between financial industries but preserve the split regulatory authority between the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve.

Rubin called LaFalce's bill "the best chance" for gaining bipartisan support and eventual enactment. With the exception of a provision that would allow the mixing of banking and industrial activities, Rubin told reporters that the administration fully supports the bill.

The Treasury, represented by Rubin, and the central bank, represented by Greenspan, have long been at odds over how to overhaul the existing Depression-era legislation.

The administration wants to let banks diversify through subsidiaries of the bank itself, not just through affiliated companies within the same parent holding company. That arrangement would increase the power of the Treasury's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, regulator of nationally chartered banks.

On the other side of the battle, bills letting banks into other kinds of financial activities through a holding company structure would expand the Fed's role in regulating financial services industries.

Consumer activists, including Ralph Nader, have opposed previous versions of the legislation, saying it would concentrate financial power in a few hands and hurt consumers.

Rep. Paul Kanjorski, D-Pa., expressed concern that with a greater mixing of financial industries, regional banks could become "vacuum cleaners" of smaller banks and then be taken over themselves by larger corporations.

Rubin's comments Wednesday came as Wall Street titans, including the head of Merrill Lynch, urged Congress to enact financial overhaul legislation, a version of which died last year.

Merrill Lynch chairman and chief executive officer David Komansky appealed to patriotism in exhorting the banking regulators to stop feuding.

"If fiercely competitive financial firms can set aside our parochial interests and achieve consensus, surely our government agencies can do the same," Komansky testified. "For the sake of our nation, all of us need to focus less on turf and more on common ground."

Without financial revamping legislation, he warned, "We're speeding into the 21st century in a vehicle that was designed in 1933."

Komansky was referring to the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which erected the barriers separating the financial services industries at a time when the government feared that banks would become too powerful.

John McCoy, president and chief executive of Bank One, who appeared with Komansky, was asked by a lawmaker which approach he would prefer, Treasury's or the Fed's. "I basically believe that we can be supportive either way," he replied.

The parade of industry officials testifying in favor of sweeping financial legislation also included Michael Patterson, vice chairman of investment bank J.P. Morgan; Richard Huber, chairman, president and CEO of insurance giant Aetna; Roy Zuckerberg, partner in Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs and chairman of the Securities Industry Association; and Matthew Fink, president of the Investment Company Institute, which represents the mutual fund industry.

American consumers spend an estimated $300 billion a year on financial services. Backers of the overhaul legislation, some of whom have been pushing it in Congress for 20 years, say it is needed to keep the U.S. financial industry competitive in a fast-changing world.

____________________________________________________________________

Sorry about this link - it's a biggie!

http://search2.usatoday.com:80/plweb-cgi/fastweb?state_id=918943153&view=default&numhitsfound=1&query=greenspan%20rubin&query_rule=%28$query%29&docid=61&docdb=money&dbname=money&operator=AND&TemplateName=predoc.tmpl&setCookie=1

This is scary stuff, people. If this passes, we are in DEEP shit!

-- @ (@@@.@), February 13, 1999

Answers

Hey "a"--

Great minds think alike. :>) I must have posted within seconds of your post.

Thanks for the info.

-- Scarlett (ohara@tara.net), February 13, 1999.