As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

In July of 2011, I was one of the first to bring to your attention to the incredible fact that the US Federal Reserve had secretly given away $16 TRILLION dollars;

Bernanke Secretly Gives away Sixteen Trillion Dollars

"The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the US Federal Reserve was recently carried out due to the Ron Paul/Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill passed in 2010. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, while leading the charge for an audit in the Senate, watered down the original language of house bill (HR1207) so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and others, opposed the audit.

What the audit revealed was incredible: between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world's banks, corporations, and governments by giving them US$16,000,000,000,000.00 - that's 16 TRILLION dollars." Richard Mills

It gets worse, much worse, in fact it's downright incestuous.Let's do a follow up and see who, besides *foreign banks and corporations from Scotland to South Korea, received a large chunk of that money.

* Banks like JP Morgan benefited from the foreign bailouts - they are some of the largest creditors of the bailed out countries. Instead of having to write off their foreign losses the US Federal Reserve bailouts enabled them to be paid in full.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigates potential conflicts of interest. The GAO did investigate the $16 trillion giveaway and laid out the findings but did not name names. Those names have now been released - here's three of the more shocking cases...

"In Dimon's (JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon)case, JPMorgan received some $391 billion of the $4 trillion in emergency Fed funds at the same time his bank was used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for emergency lending programs. In March of 2008, the Fed provided JPMorgan with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. Dimon also got the Fed to provide JPMorgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. And he convinced the Fed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired the troubled investment bank.

Another high-profile conflict involved Stephen Friedman, the former chairman of the New York Fed's board of directors. Late in 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap loans from the Federal Reserve. During that period, Friedman sat on the Goldman Sachs board. He also owned Goldman stock, something that was prohibited by Federal Reserve conflict of interest regulations. Although it was not publicly disclosed at the time, Friedman received a waiver from the Fed's conflict of interest rules in late 2008. Unbeknownst to the Fed, Friedman continued to purchase shares in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009, according to the GAO.

In another case, General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt was a New York Fed board member at the same time GE helped create a Commercial Paper Funding Facility during the financial crisis. The Fed later provided $16 billion in financing to GE under this emergency lending program." Fed Board Member Conflicts Detailed by GAO, http://www.sanders.senate.gov/

Below is the full list of 18 Fed board members who gave their own banks four trillion dollars:

1. Jamie Dimon, the Chairman and CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2007. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $391 billion in total financial assistance. JP Morgan Chase was also used by the Fed as a clearinghouse for the Fed's emergency lending programs.

   In March of 2008, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with $29 billion in financing to acquire Bear Stearns. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided JP Morgan Chase with an 18-month exemption from risk-based leverage and capital requirements. The Fed also agreed to take risky mortgage-related assets off of Bear Stearns balance sheet before JP Morgan Chase acquired this troubled investment bank.

   "I just think this constant refrain, 'bankers, bankers, bankers' -- it's just a really unproductive and unfair way of treating people. People should just stop doing that." Jamie Dimon

2. Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, served on the New York Fed's Board of Directors from 2006-2011. General Electric received $16 billion in low-interest financing from the Federal Reserve's Commercial Paper Funding Facility during this time period.

3. Stephen Friedman. In 2008, the New York Fed approved an application from Goldman Sachs to become a bank holding company giving it access to cheap Fed loans. During the same period, Friedman, who was chairman of the New York Fed at the time, sat on the Goldman Sachs board of directors and owned Goldman stock, something the Fed's rules prohibited. He received a waiver in late 2008 that was not made public (the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans). After Friedman received the waiver, he continued to purchase stock in Goldman from November 2008 through January of 2009 unbeknownst to the Fed, according to the GAO.

   During the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs received $814 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

4. Sanford Weill, the former CEO of Citigroup, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York in 2006. During the financial crisis, Citigroup received over $2.5 trillion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

5. Richard Fuld, Jr, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in New York from 2006 to 2008. During the financial crisis, the Fed provided $183 billion in total financial assistance to Lehman before it collapsed.

6. James M. Wells, the Chairman and CEO of SunTrust Banks, has served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta since 2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

7. Richard Carrion, the head of Popular Inc. in Puerto Rico, has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2008. Popular received $1.2 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.

8. James Smith, the Chairman and CEO of Webster Bank, served on the Federal Reserve's Board of Directors in Boston from 2008-2010. Webster Bank received $550 million in total financing from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.

9. Ted Cecala, the former Chairman and CEO of Wilmington Trust, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Philadelphia from 2008-2010. Wilmington Trust received $3.2 billion in total financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

10. Robert Jones, the President and CEO of Old National Bancorp, has served on the Fed's Board of Directors in St. Louis since 2008. Old National Bancorp received a total of $550 million in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility during the financial crisis.

11. James Rohr, the Chairman and CEO of PNC Financial Services Group, served on the Fed's Board of Directors in Cleveland from 2008-2010. PNC received $6.5 billion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

12. George Fisk, the CEO of LegacyTexas Group, was a director at the Dallas Federal Reserve in 2009. During the financial crisis, his firm received a $5 million low-interest loan from the Federal Reserve's Term Auction Facility.

13. Dennis Kuester, the former CEO of Marshall & Ilsley, served as a board director on the Chicago Federal Reserve from 2007-2008. During the financial crisis, his bank received over $21 billion in low-interest loans from the Fed.

14. George Jones, Jr., the CEO of Texas Capital Bank, has served as a board director at the Dallas Federal Reserve since 2009. During the financial crisis, his bank received $2.3 billion in total financing from the Fed's Term Auction Facility.

15. Douglas Morrison, was the Chief Financial Officer at CitiBank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, while he served as a board director at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank in 2006. During the financial crisis, CitiBank in Sioux Falls, South Dakota received over $21 billion in total financing from the Federal Reserve.

16. L. Phillip Humann, the former CEO of SunTrust Banks, served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta from 2006-2008. During the financial crisis, SunTrust received $7.5 billion in total financial assistance from the Fed.

17. Henry Meyer, III, the former CEO of KeyCorp, served on the Board of Directors at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland from 2006-2007. During the financial crisis, KeyBank (owned by KeyCorp) received over $40 billion in total financing from the Federal Reserve.

18. Ronald Logue, the former CEO of State Street Corporation, served as a board member of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank from 2006-2007. During the financial crisis, State Street Corporation received a total of $42 billion in financing from the Federal Reserve.

"The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates. Altogether some two-thirds of the contracts that the Fed awarded to manage its emergency lending programs were no-bid contracts. Morgan Stanley was given the largest no-bid contract worth $108.4 million to help manage the Fed bailout of AIG." ~ Mises.ca

Conclusion

The financial sector parasites, the banksters and their political puppets, that have historically fed on our society have never been so brazen. The looting of the public treasury is very much in the open - if anyone cares to look - and done with impunity.

This is all happening because our elected politicians do not work for the people, our elected leaders have stuck their snouts deep in the trough of power and self indulgence, representative democracy has been co-opted by big-moneyed interests and political parties represent their establishment not the people's interests.

"The lending suites that were set up for months and years, beyond the initial crisis point, were focused on how to keep banks profitable, not just how to keep them alive. The banks were able to access emergency lending facilities, or change themselves into bank holding companies overnight, to borrow at next to nothing, and if they chose, lend back to the government at a tidy profit. You didn't have to think at all to make money. And you didn't have to worry about that toxic balance sheet, because the government was going to help you grow your way out of it. They will also facilitate mergers to help decimate your competition. The money that the banks borrowed for nothing could have just as easily gone to underwater homeowners. There's nothing special about the banks except that they know the Fed policymakers personally." ~ David Dayen, firedoglake.com

Fed loans at near-zero interest rates, incestuous bailouts, secret waivers, no-bid contracts, and a failed Republic should be on all our radar screens. Are they on yours?

If not, maybe they should be.