This week’s guests:
– Katherine Austin Fisk on the markets, the financial crisis, and the bailout.
– We take your pledges of support for KPFT and The Monitor!
Catherine Austin Fitts offers a unique perspective on the global financial system and on the political economy. Her background includes Managing Director and member of the Board of Wall Street investment bank Dillon Read & Co. Inc., Assistant Secretary of Housing – Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration and President of Hamilton Securities Group, a Washington DC investment bank.
Catherine has designed and closed over $25 billion of transactions and investments to-date, has led portfolio strategy for $300 billion of financial assets and liabilities and has participated in the private and public workout and turn around of billions in mortgage, real estate and banking fraud.
Catherine serves on the board of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, a non-profit civil rights and educational organization which advocates and undertakes litigation against illegal collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial securities. Catherine publishes a column “Mapping the Real Deal” in Scoop Media in New Zealand.
WEBSITE:
Catherine Austin Fitts’ Blog: Mapping the Real Deal
SELECTED BOOKS:
The Washington-Wall Street Game: An Insider’s Story of How Dirty Money Rules Our Lives… and What You Can Do About It!
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil
QUOTE:
When I served as Assistant Secretary of Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the first Bush Administration, I discovered that the government was paying billions of dollars to large banks, defense contractors and universities to collect and manage data on the people and resources of the United States.
The lead defense contractor at HUD was paid approximately $150 billion to run the systems. (That was later to increase by even greater amounts.) No matter how much we paid to create and maintain rich databases, it was almost impossible for me to get any data that I needed to do my job. What I did get required a extraordinary effort on my part.
My efforts to get basic management and financial information was met with fear, lies and endless passive aggressive behavior. I soon learned that data about money in government was like cigarettes in prison. It was a currency, traded for power and position. Data that was supposed to be public was not easily available to government officials and it was certainly not available to the average person. Data that was supposed to be private appeared easily accessible to a variety of financial interests.
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