Bring Out Your Dead: Four Bank Failure Friday

The FDIC finally pulled the plug on four more ailing banks.

Two have assets over $1 billion.

Vinyard Bank, California
Total Assts $1.9 Billion

Temicula Valley Bank, California
Assets $1.3 Billion

Two are much smaller

Bank First, South Dakota
Assets $275 Million

First Piedmont Bank, Georgia
Assets $109 Million

Seven Bank Failure Thursday

The FDIC broke it's all friday pattern of bank shutdowns, to officialy pull the plug on 7 banks-- deemed too small to save. Six of them are in the great state of Illinois and most are very small but the last one on the list had assets of almost a billion.

All info from Calculated Risk which links to The FDIC Website.

Rock River Bank
Oregon, Illinois

"As of April 30, 2009, Rock River Bank had total assets of $77 million and total deposits of approximately $75.8 million ... The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $27.6 million."

First State Bank Of Winchester
Winchester, Illinois

"As of April 30, 2009, The First State Bank of Winchester had total assets of $36 million and total deposits of approximately $34 million. ... The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $6 million."

John Warner Bank
Clinton, Illinois

"As of April 30, 2009, The John Warner Bank had total assets of $70 million and total deposits of approximately $64 million ... The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $10 million."

First National Bank Of Danville
Danville, Illinois

"As of April 30, 2009, The First National Bank of Danville had total assets of $166 million and total deposits of approximately $147 million. ... The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $24 million."

Elizabeth State Bank
Elizabeth, Illinois

As of April 30, 3009, The Elizabeth State Bank had total assets of $55.5 million and total deposits of approximately $50.4 million. ...The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $11.2 million.

Millennium State Bank of Texas
Dallas, Texas

From the FDIC: As of June 30, 2009, Millennium State Bank of Texas had total assets of approximately $118 million and total deposits of $115 million. State Bank of Texas agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed banks assets. ... The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund will be $47 million.

Founders Bank
Worth, Illinois

As of April 30, 2009, Founders Bank had total assets of $962.5 million and total deposits of approximately $848.9 million.The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $188.5 million.

At the end of the day, 52 banks had officially failed this year but the number of banks in living dead zombie state is much much higher. It's also a secret.

The March To Fascism And How To Stop It

People know I've been beating the drum, warning of the Fascist trends in our government which have been building for years and are reaching a crisis.

Jack Gildern did a much better post on this subject than I have called Fascism: Foolish Fallacy Or Frightening Fact. I urge you to read it-please.

He starts with a simple definition of Fascism.

Here is the literal definition of Fascism:
fas⋅cism [fash-iz-uhm]
–noun
1. A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
2. The philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.

Of course, we haven't reached this level yet. Exactly when one says something that walks like a duck and quacks like a duck can be described as a duck is always a judgement call. The problem is--- This is not a duck we are talking about here-- It's Fascism!-- or perhaps some other brand of totalitarianism. We test and test for cancer in a way we don't for colds because- it's a deadly and often fatal disease and when we find it we try to kill it and cut it out. (no that was not just a call to kill the president. Our troubles go much deeper than one man. He was actually elected)

I made two comments that prescribe what I think might be the quickest and most effective way to stop this train and get people to think. You need to read the post and comments for context.

Comment One

"One of the best posts on here ever. I think one of the biggest factors at work here is what Hitler called the big lie. Admiting just how bad, Obama is means confronting our own guilt for having elected him and going deeper into just how the government got this out of control means looking at almost a century of guilt.

We as American's as whole- not all, have betrayed our founders and the basic ideals and foundations our country was founded on in exchange for a few favored programs or vague promises.

People need to stop and admit they live a nearly bankrupt and nearly Fascist country and then decide what role they have played in it and what they are going to do about it.

As, I mentioned before-- I think the Tenth Amendment route might be the fastest clearest way to stop this train. There are states and places in the country where enough broad support for individual rights and the Constitution exists. We need to work from there, to both educate and broaden this base and use it to confront the Monstrous powers in Washington.

After all, the Constitution and the founding documents of the country are on our side. If enough people scream that they really matter, and that the law matters and rights and truth matter, something might be done."

Comment Two

Well, I'm going to have to admit to living in "blue states" all my life in either NY or PA.

But my perception from my reading, interactions and occasional travels is that there really are very large chunks of the country that could almost be called "occupied territory" at this point. I mean when was the last time Wyoming, Utah or Alaska voted blue. I think we need to start from there and work to educate the people about just how deeply damaging the federal occupation of their states has been. Instead of working from positions of weakness, we can start from strength where there is already a lot of political and media support and build on that.

The starting point should be for the "occupied states" to one by one re-affirm their commitment to the original Constitution and it's tenth amendment- which in reality is an implied threat to take the clear course out of the union that the Constitution allows.

Hopefully, a chain of firm resolutions by a large number of states that seem very serious will in itself put a radical brake on things. Remember that just by taking these actions, one is calling attention to all the Constitutional and legal violations, which may help more people in other states to wake up and think deeply about what's going on. This will be hard for the media to ignore.

Remember---the Constitution and all the legal traditions of our country are on our side. Every founding document shows a clear intent to protect individuals from out of control federal power and to protect minorities from a possible tyranical majority.

We can't do this blindly so each resolution needs to state clearly the exact Federal moves that would trigger further action. For example, I think every state should declare federal limitations on free speech and the press to be an instant trigger for further action. Moves against the Second Amendment are in close to the same territory.

Using The Other F-Word

One word that is popping up on signs at tea parties is Fascism and it clearly seems to have invoked more than a little fear on the traditional left. In spite of their common use of the word, they have gone to elaborate lengths to obscure it's true meaning and philisophical roots.

Study the meaning of this word. Go to the Wikipedia and you will see the similarities between Obama's current policies and Fascism. The founders of our country were true Liberals and opposed these ideas with their lives.

My last post about the PPIP program implied that many of Obama's policies and methods were not socialist, but corporatist or fascist.



Steve Malanga, who I think I remember from Crains, NY has written a great little primer on this. He correctly points out that corporatist policies often gain popularty in periods of crisis and are in fact attempts by elites and existing power bases to limit and resist change.Let's start with definitions.

Corporatism

"Historically, corporatism refers to a political or economic system in which power is held by civic assemblies that represent economic, industrial, agrarian, social, cultural, and/or professional groups. These civic assemblies are known as corporations (not the same as the legally incorporated business entities known as corporations, though some are such). Corporations are unelected bodies with an internal hierarchy; their purpose is to exert control over the social and economic life of their respective areas. Thus, for example, a steel corporation would be a cartel composed of all the business leaders in the steel industry, coming together to discuss a common policy on prices and wages. When the political and economic power of a country rests in the hands of such groups, then a corporatist system is in place."

I can't paste in the whole definition but corporatism works through a complex of "public/private partnerships which ossify power through force.

"Political scientists may also use the term corporatism to describe a practice whereby a state, through the process of licensing and regulating officially-incorporated social, religious, economic, or popular organizations, effectively co-opts their leadership or circumscribes their ability to challenge state authority by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy, as well as sometimes running them, either directly or indirectly through corporations. This usage is particularly common in the area of East Asian studies, and is sometimes also referred to as state corporatism."

Fascism

Fascism, can be described as a much broader ideology but fascist economic ideas are basically corporatist.

"The fascists opposed both international socialism and liberal capitalism, arguing that their views represented a third way. They claimed to provide a realistic economic alternative that was neither laissez-faire capitalism nor communism.[19] They favoured corporatism and class collaboration, believing that the existence of inequality and separate social classes was beneficial (contrary to the views of socialists).[20] Fascists argued that the state had a role in mediating relations between these classes (contrary to the views of liberal capitalists).[21]

An inherent aspect of fascist economies was economic dirigisme[22], meaning an economy where the government exerts strong directive influence, and effectively controls production and allocation of resources. In general, apart from the nationalizations of some industries, fascist economies were based on private property and private initiative, but these were contingent upon service to the state.[23]"

Getting to Malanga's piece

"But we are entering quite a different age right now, one in which the President of the United States and his hand-selected industrial overseers fire the chief executive of General Motors and chart the company’s next moves in order to preserve it. Conservative critics of the president have said that the government’s GM strategy is one of many examples of an America drifting toward socialism. But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. It is a turn-of-the 20th century philosophy, updated for the dawn of the 21st century, which positions itself as an antidote to the kind of messy capitalism that has transformed the Fortune 500 and every corner of our economy in the last half century. To do so corporatism seeks to substitute the wisdom of the few for the hundreds of millions of individual actions and transactions of the many that set the direction of the economy from the bottom up."

I urge one to read and think about it and I leave with one last definition. Obama's ideas are in stark contrast those of our nation's founders.

Classical Liberalism

"Classical liberalism holds that individual rights are natural, inherent, or inalienable, and exist independently of government. Thomas Jefferson called these inalienable rights: "...rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law', because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."[25] For classical liberalism, rights are of a negative nature—rights that require that other individuals (and governments) refrain from interfering with individual liberty, whereas social liberalism (also called modern liberalism or welfare liberalism) holds that individuals have a right to be provided with certain benefits or services by others.[26] Unlike social liberals, classical liberals are "hostile to the welfare state."[9] They do not have an interest in material equality but only in "equality before the law."[27] Classical liberalism is critical of social liberalism and takes offense at group rights being pursued at the expense of individual rights.[28]"

PPIC And More FDIC Lies

I have to be honest here. I have had strong fears for years that America is sliding rapidly towards fascism or some form of totalitarian government.

One of the biggest myths about this type of regime is that one can spot it by proliferation and strength of it's laws. In fact, totalitarian states are places in which the law is the whim of the king or dictator. Our founders feared this situation and tied leaders to the law with very few "if's ands or buts". The president, legislators, police and government officials pledge allegance to the law. Emergency powers are very limited and for the most part were only for use during war.

In contrast, let's look at some fascist and pro fascist political views.

Carl Schmidt

"In 1921, Schmitt became a professor at the University of Greifswald, where he published his essay "Die Diktatur" ("On Dictatorship"), in which he discussed the foundations of the newly-established Weimar Republic, emphasising the office of the Reichspräsident. In this essay, Schmitt compared and contrasted what he saw as the effective and ineffective elements of the new constitution of his country. To him, the office of the president could be characterized as a comparatively effective element within the new constitution, because of the power granted to the president to declare a state of emergency. This power, which Schmitt discussed and implicitly praised as dictatorial, was seen as more effective, more in line with the underlying mentality of political power, than the comparatively slow and ineffective processes of legislative political power reached through parliamentary discussion and compromise.

Schmitt was at pains to remove what he saw as a squeamish taboo surrounding the concept of "dictatorship" and to show that, in his eyes, the concept is implicit whenever power is wielded through pathways outside the slow and rusty processes of parliamentary politics:

“If the constitution of a state is democratic, then every exceptional negation of democratic principles, every exercise of state power independent of the approval of the majority, can be called dictatorship.”[citation needed]

For Schmitt, every government capable of decisive action must include a dictatorial element within its constitution. Although the German concept of Ausnahmezustand is best translated as "state of emergency", it literally means state of exception which,according to Schmitt, frees the executive from any legal restraints to its power that would normally apply. The use of the term "exceptional" has to be underlined here: Schmitt defines sovereignty as the power to decide the instauration of state of exception, as Giorgio Agamben has noted. According to Agamben[1], Schmitt's conceptualization of the "state of exception" as belonging to the core-concept of sovereignty was a response to Walter Benjamin's concept of a "pure" or "revolutionary" violence, which didn't enter into any relationship whatsoever with right. Through the state of exception, Schmitt included all types of violence under right. According to Giorgio Agamben, this kind of violence, which necessarily bears a juridical value, is another example of the fusion of right to "bare life" (It. vita nuda, Grk. zoe) that transforms the juridical system into a "death machine," able to perform acts of pure violence as needed for self-legitimation, creating Homo sacer, a being that cannot be "murdered" or "sacrificed" but only killed.

Schmitt opposed what he called "chief constable dictature", or the declaration of a state of emergency in order to save the legal order (a temporary suspension of law, defined itself by moral or legal right): the state of emergency is limited (even if a posteriori, by law), to "sovereign dictature", in which law was suspended, as in the classical state of exception, not to "save the Constitution", but rather to create another Constitution. This is how he theorized Hitler's continual suspension of the legal constitutional order during the Third Reich (the Weimar Republic's Constitution was never abrogated, underlined Giorgio Agamben;[2][citation needed] rather, it was "suspended" for four years, first at February 28, 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree, with the suspension renewed every four years, implying a -- continual -- state of emergency)."

Benito Mussolini (actual quote)

"The foundation of Fascism is the conception of the State, its character, its duty, and its aim. Fascism conceives of the State as an absolute, in comparison with which all individuals or groups are relative, only to be conceived of in their relation to the State. The conception of the Liberal State is not that of a directing force, guiding the play and development, both material and spiritual, of a collective body, but merely a force limited to the function of recording results: on the other hand, the Fascist State is itself conscious and has itself a will and a personality -- thus it may be called the "ethic" State....

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone.... "

I won't go on endlessly about this, power unlimited by law is the defining aspect of all tyrany. At it's most exteme we have the Fuhrer Principle.

"The ideology of the Führerprinzip sees each organization as a hierarchy of leaders, where every leader (Führer, in German) has absolute responsibility in his own area, demands absolute obedience from those below him and answers only to his superiors. The supreme leader, Adolf Hitler, answered to no one. Giorgio Agamben has argued that Hitler saw himself as an incarnation of auctoritas, and as the living law itself. The Führerprinzip paralleled the functionality of military organizations, which continue to use a similar authority structure today. The justification for the civil use of the Führerprinzip was that unquestioning obedience to superiors supposedly produced order and prosperity in which those deemed 'worthy' would share."

We all should know, the checks put in place by our system to control state power. Congress debates and makes clear laws, the president and the executive branch carry them out and the Supreme court makes sure they conform to the "supreme law" of the constitution which of course can be changed. The whole process places difficult, slow and messy roadblocks in the path of those who "just want to get things done", in times of crisis or "emergency".

Listing all the recent "emergency measures" of dubious legality would take too long or might not be possible at all since many are secret. The recent PPIP plan is an example.

"In the fine print of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner’s plan to lend as much as $1 trillion to private investors to help them buy toxic assets from our nation’s banks, you’ll find some details of how the F.D.I.C is trying to stabilize the system by adding more risk, not less, to the system.

It’s going to be insuring 85 percent of the debt, provided by the Treasury, that private investors will use to subsidize their acquisitions of toxic assets. The program, extraordinary in its size and scope, is the equivalent of TARP 2.0. Only this time, Congress didn’t get a chance to vote."http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/the-taxpayer-takes-the-risk-in-fdics-no-risk-insurance/#statute"

The action is a clear attempt to stuff evade the real risks and obligations being taken on by current and future taxpayers and also those who might lend the government money and to get around any need to appropriate more money.