Thursday 9 July 2015

It's Just Identity Politics Gone Mad...



Oh, please tell me they're joking...

...I've always made fun of the fact that they always seem to add an extra letter onto the catch-all Gay acronym every 5 years, but this.... This is just taking the piss.


Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Minister, Britain has had the same foreign policy objective for at least the last 500 years:

To create a disunited Europe.

In that cause we have fought with the Dutch against the Spanish, with the Germans against the French, with the French and Italians against the Germans, and with the French against the Germans and Italians.

Divide and rule, you see.

Why should we change now, when it's worked so well?

James Hacker: That's all ancient history, surely.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, and current policy.

We had to break the whole thing up, so we had to get inside.

We tried to break it up from the outside, but that wouldn't work.

Now that we're inside we can make a complete pig's breakfast of the whole thing!

Set the Germans against the French, the French against the Italians, the Italians against the Dutch.

The Foreign Office is terribly pleased; it's just like old times!

James Hacker: Surely we're all committed to the European ideal...?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Really, Minister. [laughs]

James Hacker: If not, why are we pushing for an increase in the membership?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, for the same reason.

It's just like the United Nations, in fact.

The more members it has, the more arguments it can stir up.

The more futile and impotent it becomes.

James Hacker: What appalling cynicism.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes. 

We call it diplomacy, Minister."

It's just Cultural Marxism gone mad.

Transvestites and Lesbians are mortal enemies, and many militant lesbians despise and resent gay men as being disease carrying wastrels and scumbags who bring them nothing but grief, politically.

And they hate Disco, too.

Militant Lesbian lawyers were in the vanguard in California in the 80s, leading the struggle to make AIDS and HIV infection non-reportable, and I can prove it.

They were doing everything they could to ensure it spread as widely as possible throughout the consolidated (male) gay community and kill as many as possible, because they hate men and think they're all rapists and potential child molesters - read "Intercourse" by Andrea Dworkin.

They were the ones who came up with the doctrine of "My disease has Civil Rights" and "HIV is part of my identity as a gay man", which idiots like Stephen Fry still espouse to this day, whilst also claiming that there were to be an epidemic of up to 2 million heterosexual cases of AIDS expected in the U.S. in the next 10 years, which was a lie they made up to get Federal Funding for "treatment" and prevention.

It's just Cultural Marxism gone mad.


Some People Have Strange Ideas About Queer Culture.

EXAMPLE : Mr Lyndon H. Larouche Jr.




LaRouche: Aristotle is the root of the evil we confront today

From EIR September 13, 1991.
Lyndon LaRouche made the following remarks in a taped message to the annual conference of the International Caucus of Labor Committees on Aug. 31.
"The cult of Buggery vs. Cusa and Kepler
Let' s situate the problem in terms of science as such.

What we call modern science-that is, the idea of an integrated, comprehensive mathematical physics, or physical science, began during the second quarter of the 15th century-we might say, in effect, at about the time of the 1439 Council of Florence. From inside science itself, the policy and perspective, the Christian Platonic approach to science typified by the work of Cusa, who is the virtual founder of modern science, by Leonardo da Vinci, and by followers such as Kepler, was essentially uncontested, that is, within science itself, up until about the beginning of the 17th century; and after that period, the foundations of science laid by, principally, Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, and Kepler, were continued by people such as Desargues, Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz, the Bernoullis. and so forth. into Monge and Poncelet, Riemann, Gauss, and Cantor, in the l9th century.

The problem on which we should focus, both in science-that is, the problem of lack of understanding of what the cold fusion experiments signify, the crisis in science, the epistemological crisis in science prompted by the cold fusion experiments- results, and the witch-hunt itself-both go back to something which happened essentially during the 17th century in England and France. On the British side, the problem was the establishment of what became known as British empiricism by a group of Rosicrucian cultists associated with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Elias Ashmole (the founder of British Freemasonry), John Locke and, of course, including Isaac Newton.

These people introduced an anti-Renaissance, what was considered at that period an anti-science, Aristotelian method, which was infused in a very peculiar with one element. This element was the introduction into science of what became known as empiricism, but was originally the central feature of the most notorious, sexually perverted religious cult in the history of medieval Europe - that is, the Cathar, Bogomil, or Bugger cult from the district of southern France associated with Albi and Toulouse.

The same thing happened in France itself. Buggery, in the form of the influence of this cult upon science, manifested itself in the work of Rene Descartes, particularly in Descartes's notion of deus ex machina. This established Cartesianism as a form of Buggery which has been traditional in French science and poisoning it or buggering it to the present day. This is quite literally the case: a Rosicrucian cult (which featured alchemy as one of its claims to fame), which was Aristotelian, cabbalistic, and Bugger (that is, it featured this split between spirit and flesh, as the new materialistic doctrine), which is characteristic of the Buggery cult of south France, of the Rhone district and Albi-Toulouse centuries earlier.

This cult merits a little bit of attention just so we know what we're talking about. Most people don't know this.

Before Christianity, there were established some very vicious cults in the area near Babylon: Oriental cults. These cults led to the various manifestations of a particular form of cult called Manicheanism.
Now, one of these Manichean cults was situated in the eastern part of Turkey in the mountainous areas. For a while, this cult was used - it was a very vicious, bloody-handed cult - by the Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire. Later, according to Gibbon and others, a Byzantine Emperor called Constantine Copronymous took the cult, transplanted it or a good part of it from eastern Anatolia and stuck it in what was then Thrace, which is today modern Bulgaria. This cult was given the position of guarding the northern borders of the Byzantine Empire against these Slavs who were coming down into the area at the time.

As a result, as the cult became embedded there, sponsored by the Byzantine Empire, no less, the cult took a Slavic name, and became known as not only the Cathars, but also the Bogomils. The cult was spread by Venetian bankers working on behalf of the Byzantine Empire, into the south of France, where it was known variously thus, as the Bogomil cult, which is what the Bulgarian branch of the cult called itself, the Cathars, which all called themselves, that is, the Cathars, the "pure," or the purified, and it was also known in France as the Bulgarian cult. So we had the French les bougres, which was translated into English for the convenience of the English speaker, as "the Buggers."
Now, because of this cult's peculiar sexual perversion - that is, the belief that a man putting semen into a woman to impregnate her, was propagating the flesh, and that was evil - it resorted to various other kinds of sexual recreation and thus the name "Bugger" in English became associated with what it has become associated with in English to this day.
So quite literally, Francis Bacon and his tribe buggered science and the result of this was empiricism.
And a similar thing happened in France, in the form of the cult of Descartes, of Cartesianism.
This cult, this pseudo-alchemic cult called "Rosicrucian" during that period, and later called Freemasonic (based on the Freemasonic orders which were spun out of Rosicrucianism by people such as Elias Ashmole, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke and so forth), has been the dominant influence in what is called (or was called partly during the 17th century and more so during the 18th century), "the Enlightenment."
The characteristic of the Enlightenment is that it was anti-Renaissance, and that it promoted materialism. Now, let's look exactly at what that means, and how that affects the kind of problem in science we're dealing with in cold fusion today, how the two things intersect. First, as I said, we'll look, from the scientific side, at the epistemological crisis, and secondly, let's look at it from the standpoint of the cult aspect of the crisis.
The Platonic method
In reality, what we call "modern science" is a highly subjective business. People who run around talking about "objective science" really show that they don't know much about the history of science.
What do we do in science?
Well, science is something which can happen only to a human being - or human beings. Only human beings, as distinct from any other kind of animal, can change the behavior of the human species to such effect, that we not only change our behavior, but through these changes, we increase the potential population-density and the quality of development of the members of the species.
By testing the results of our changes, or our methods of making these changes, against their effects in terms of increase of potential population density, we are using nature, or testing our ability to increase our power over nature, and using that kind of experiment to determine whether the method we are using to make these changes is a sound method (not necessarily a perfect method, but a sound one). And thus science is based on testing not particular experiments, not whether A causes B; but what science actually tests is whether the method we used to attempt to understand the relationship between A and B, and to generate successive ideas above A and B, whether that method, by virtue of the fact that it leads to increases in the potential population-density of mankind, is an effective method.
By method, we mean what Plato called the principle of hypothesis, or the higher hypothesis. And Plato also referred to things such as improving the higher hypothesis, which is known as hypothesizing the higher hypothesis. (Much of this material, I should note incidentally, is the subject of a very special campaign paper on science policy, which I hope will be issued in the not-too-distant future, so you can refer to that as the time comes to do so, but in the meantime, just to indicate what we're doing here.) The result is that science represents, thus, mind over matter. It represents man's creative powers of mind, the powers of valid creative scientific discovery, or the powers of creation in classical musical composition-not in rock, but in classical musical composition. These powers of the human mind exert power over the lawful ordering of the universe through scientific and technological progress, as manifest by the increase of man's power per capita over the universe, as measured in terms of potential population-density's increases. So that's what science is, and that's what science was understood to be, by the founder of modern European science, Nicolaus of Cusa, back in the second quarter and a little bit later of the 15th century, by Leonardo da Vinci, Cusa's student, in a sense, his immediate follower of his ideas in the latter part of the 15th century and early 16th century; by the great follower of Cusa and Leonardo, Johannes Kepler, and so forth, and so on.
Science has always meant that; science has always been subjective in the sense that the subject of science is to look over our own shoulders, as we are developing improved methods of scientific investigation, and to determine what direction of improvements are successful in terms of potential population-density, and which methods are not provable. But essentially, science is the study of the human mind's capability of generating valid science. It is not a study of what happens outside our skins in nature-except through the medium. The only way we can understand nature, is through the creative powers of mind, and therefore, those creative powers of mind, which we watch as we work on nature, and watching our minds work more or less successfully as we work on nature, is the essence of science.
Now what the Bogomils did, and what their followers did, the Rosicrucians, the empiricists, is that they said we will tolerate none of this. We must separate the human mind, i.e., the human spirit, entirely from those things which involve the human flesh, its emotions, its appetites, and so forth - in other words, from the material side. We must have a separate doctrine for the material side, separate from the spiritual side, the mental side. In other words, to use modern Enlightenment language, we would say we would separate the subjective realm from the objective realm, in 19th century German, we would say we must separate Naturwissenschaft from Geisteswissenschaft. That' s the essential separation.
That is the mark of the Enlightenment. That is the mark, for example, of Immanuel Kant, who, while he was not recruited directly to my knowledge to Buggery, nonetheless, by virtue of his defense of both Baconian empiricism and Cartesianism against Leibniz, was actually the lawyer for the Buggers, and thus a Bugger in principle. That's the nature of the problem.
We come to cold fusion. We touch a very special part of this problem, as we do also at the other extreme of the scale in astrophysics. Go back a step to Leonardo, just to remind those who are not familiar with this.
Leonardo da Vinci demonstrated that physical processes, which, in geometric harmonic ordering, are congruent with what's called the Golden Section, are living processes, and that only living process have this harmonic ordering, whereas all processes which are not living processes, have a different harmonic ordering. That's one of the great discoveries of Leonardo da Vinci. It was the central discovery by da Vinci used by Kepler to found modern mathematical physics. In a paper, for example, entitled The Six-Cornered Snowflake, whose publication dates from about 1620, Kepler summarized this case, showing why snowflakes have to be hexagonal in their essential architecture, whereas living processes are different, are pentagonal, etc., and why that is necessarily the case. It's a beautiful paper, and anyone who wants to really pass the equivalent of what would be a good secondary geometry course, would, of course, have mastered that paper. When we get to the large scale, the astrophysical scale, as Kepler shows; or, when we get to the very small, down to the size of an atomic nucleus, or something of that sort, down below 10-10 meters; at these extremes, matter behaves with the same harmonic ordering, that we would otherwise expect from Leonardo's standpoint of living processes.
Now, this would mean that the universe as a whole is, in its astrophysical scale, what we call negentropic, not entropic as most physicists will insist today; that the universe as a whole does not conform to the so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics, and that also in the very small, as we've seen by the work of our collaborator, the late Prof. Winston Bostick and the work of Professor Moon and others, we've seen the same thing is true in the very small. In the very small, the organization of nature is that which conforms to Kepler's physics, not Newton's or Maxwell's, just as is the case in astrophysics: the Second Law of Thermodynamics works nowhere, except to increase the salaries of professors and to get good marks for students of those professors. Otherwise, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, except for bamboozling people, does not work at all. It works only as rhetoric. As a result of this split-the rejection of Kepler by the empiricists and by Descartes, and the attempt to establish a mechanistic or Aristotelian system, that is, a non-living system model, so-called objective science - science since the 17th century has been split into two camps.
What is at stake in the cold fusion is essentially this. If one says, that on the scale of the nucleus, the universe is organized as the students of Newton and Maxwell would have us believe, then cold fusion is virtually impossible - at least, cold fusion of this type. Whereas, if we would say that physics in the very small is organized as Kepler said of the universe generally, as Leonardo said, and as Arnold Sommerfeld, for example, was attempting to explore, then cold fusion is possible. Well, cold fusion has happened. And this, again, would say that physics in the small-that is, in the area of the scale of the nucleus, or half an Angstrom unit, or something of that sort, or an Angstrom unit-but in this scale, nuclear physics is much more interesting, much more as our dear friend Dr. Moon would have suggested.
What we are talking about in physics, or physical chemistry, belongs to the periodic table in this sense, and this goes back actually to Nicolaus of Cusa, who laid out a concept of universal evolution along these lines.
The idea of the periodic table, as Mendeleyev developed it, indicates that the existence of elements, or what we call elements, starts probably from very simple ones, such as hydrogen, or hydrogen and helium, as Dr. Moon's professor, William Draper Harkins, argued, and that it is the combination of the fusion of hydrogen and helium, or something of that sort, out of which all of the elements in the universe that we encounter are built up. The other side of the process, of course, which has been documented by Dr. Tennenbaum and others recently, is that we have a contrary process, that we can also form elements, not only by putting elements together, to build up from those of small atomic number to those of large atomic number, but we can also, by fission, go down the ladder again, and get to smaller elements, from higher numbers. So, to have this kind of process requires something - a universe which, in the small, is Keplerian, not the universe of Aristotle, Newton, and Maxwell. And that's where the teaching of a doctrine derived from empiricism and Cartesianism, a doctrine derived from Buggery, leads science to use a kind of mathematical procedure or mathematical method, which constantly comes into crisis whenever an experiment with the anomalous implications of cold fusion comes along.
So the fact that our students in the schools, to the extent that they're taught mathematics at all, are taught defective mathematics, means that we are producing scientists and others who lack the intellectual capacity to cope with something like a cold fusion experiment. So that's one of the problems which science policy has to address, and that's an area in which the cold fusion experiment's success shows that our science policy in education and so forth is breaking down, and we will have to rebuild the science policy entirely from the beginning.
The second aspect in which this same historical background is relevant, is on the characteristic, the cult features, of this hideous political witch-hunt, completely fraudulent attack, made against cold fusion and the cold fusion scientists over the past 30 months, by people such as the editor of Nature magazine and the New York Times.
Where does this come from? How is it possible, that in an area where we say that people in science are trying to find out the truth about nature, are trying to find out how to do things better, trying to correct their errors, that a completely fraudulent attack, like this political witch-hunt, could have been started and sustained for so long?
Buggery and British empiricism
To understand that, we have to go back again to the case of Bacon and Descartes. Let's concentrate just on Francis Bacon, in order to simplify the discussion for our purposes here. British empiricism was founded by a homosexual cult which is called the Court of King James I, whose big homo- sexual was Francis Bacon.
Now the significance of the homosexuality, is that this was a Buggery cult, a bunch of Rosicrucians; a Rosicrucian cult, whose features were Aristotelianism as to method; cabbalism, another kind of Satanic belief, and thirdly, the spirit-from-matter separation, which has led to modern materialism. This was the Enlightenment.
If you realize the degree to which the teachings of the followers of Bacon, of Hobbes, of John Locke, of cabbalist Isaac Newton-who really discovered almost nothing - and of similar people, dominate the institutions of science today, universities, educational policy, major magazines, such as Nature magazine, the science (mafia's) magazine, we have to realize that, like music, which is administered by a music mafia of about the same morality and disgusting depravity, that science on the administrative side or the institutional side, is effectively under the control today predominantly- not entirely, of course - but predominantly, of a priesthood; a heathen-cult priesthood; a Rosicrucian-Cathar-Bugger priesthood, which responds to the attacks on its interests, that is, its religious dogma, its cult dogma, called empiricism, or Enlightenment views, in the same way that the Buggers as religious fanatics would kill a person who offended their doctrine. And so, to understand the world today, we have to first of all, in this area, in a narrow sense, look at the fact, that science is dominated, not by honest scientists, but by people who are predominantly, when push comes to shove, representatives of a heathen-cult priesthood, rooted in the doctrines of Aristotle, cabbalism, and Buggery; that the same situation exists in the arts; you have an arts mafia, a music mafia, an art mafia, who are a collection of Buggers, pure and simple. The same group. the same crowd, the same faction. And that there is a Freemasonry, a higher-order Freemasonry, which is connected to this process.
There's another lesson which is to be learned from this, and that is a lesson which I've insisted upon many times, but not with as much success as I might have admired. That is, history is not made by the way people respond more or less spontaneously to events. There is no tabula rasa; each person that is born is enculturated; enculturated by language, enculturated by all kinds of ways, so that we step forth into this world, from early childhood, not as a tabula rasa but as a person who is imbued with all kinds of historical legacies.
For example, let' s take the Indo-European language. You speak here, each of you, an Indo-European language. Or you may speak other languages, but you speak an Indo-European language. How old is Indo-European language? Well, obviously, we can go way back to about 8,000, 10,000 or more years ! We can find in the ancient Vedic, and there's evidence to show that this record of the Vedic is not too far off today, at least the people at Poona, in India, have a pretty good picture of it; that that language, was used 8,000 years ago the immediate ancestor of Sanskrit. We can also show, of course, that all of European languages are essentially dialects of Indo-European, that is, the language from which the Vedic springs. So every time you think, in words, in the form of language, you are using a way of conscious thinking which is thousands of years old, and the way you will respond, consciously, particularly because you have to communicate with others, you respond in terms of a heritage of language, which has features in it affecting your judgment, which are thousands of years old.
The same thing is true of other forms of language, such as geometry, which is a language. You think in geometry; the kind of geometry you use, will determine the way you think. And that is a heritage which is thousands of years old.
The same thing is true in every other respect. If you accept Buggery in the form of mathematics, mathematical physics, that is, Newtonianism, Cartesianism, empiricism generally; the separation of art from science, the separation of Geisteswissenschaft from Naturwissenschaft in German; if you accept that Kantian principle, if you are a follower of Kant, you are a Bugger! Because your mind is buggered; you have adopted the separation, what is called, of the subjective from the objective, which is traced back to the Manichean cult called the Buggers in southern France, nearly 1,000 years ago. And to the same Buggery in eastern Anatolia hundreds of years before that.
The way we must fight
The important thing to understand about history, is that we get into messes because society is responding to deeply embedded, historically embedded, false assumptions, which cause the normal reaction of public opinion as well as other institutions to be the wrong one.
Over the past 25 years, we've seen that concretely: Twenty-five years ago, approximately from 1963 on, there was a mass recruitment in the United States to the rock-drug-sex counterculture. You can't separate them; they're all one package. A deliberate cult dogma, created by a Satanic cult - the Crowleyite cult in England - and put into the United -States as the rock-drug-sex counterculture, which is really a form of Satanic religion, which changed the values of our people. At the same time (approximately the same period), this was coupled with a neo-Malthusian cult. If you look at our policy today, you see that people today, in contrast to what they believed 30 years ago, believe today that a post-industrial society is good, that technology is bad, that man must adapt to the animals and to all kinds of strange species we never knew existed, and so forth, and so on. The nuclear family is considered bad, all kinds of things have happened. We no longer behave the way we did; we no longer have the values. We have been subjected to what is called a cultural paradigm shift. The axioms and postulates of our underlying assumptions of belief, have been dramatically altered by these means. Similarly, over the past 400 years, Western civilization has been in the process of being de-civilized, by the influence of a Buggery cult based on the intermeshed bleliefs of Aristotle or followers of Aristotle, of cabbalism, and of Buggery: the Cathar doctrine of the separation of matter from spirit, objective from subjective, and so forth and so on.
Therefore, we should see in this lesson, an identification of the problem which faces us: the Evil problem. It is not enough for us to respond to particular evils around us, to try to correct problems. That's not good enough. It won't work. If the majority of our population and our institutions are committed to policy assumptions, which policy assumptions ate causing these problems, you will not be able to succeed in getting through any remedy which contradicts those policy assumptions. In order to shape history, one must address directly the underlying policy assumptions, the cultural assumptions, which underlie the characteristic response of institutions and populations. That is what we have done, I believe, with more or less effectiveness, over the past couple of decades or so that this association has been in existence.
The reason I'm in prison, is because we're good at it, and because it works. We were not stuck into prison because we said things which displeased somebody. I was stuck into prison with others, and we were subjected to all kinds of evil harassment, terrible lies spread through nearly all of the press repeatedly over and over again - why?
Not because people didn't like what we said, but because we were effective with our methods. What has the enemy said? The enemy has said we will cease to harass you, if you will give up your method, if you will stop doing that, if you will play ball on our terms, if you will make your criticisms or suggestions, within the confines of the kind of behavior which we consider acceptable. You want to say something in science? Say it in Baconian language; use the mathematics of Francis Bacon and Descartes's followers, and we'll listen to you. If you don't want to use that kind of argument, we won't listen to you. But if you use that kind of argument, and you succeed in influencing somebody, we're going to kill you. Because you're taking us back to Cusa, Leonardo, Kepler, and Leibniz, and so forth, and that we will not tolerate.
We attacked the underlying assumptions of the problems in Central and South America, and the result was Operation Juarez. We came within an ace of winning that battle in 1982; if we had won, the world would be vastly different than today, and all of Henry Kissinger's backers and George Bush's backers would be out of business. We were a threat. In the case of the SDI, which was a product of our influence upon the Reagan administration (a part of it), we changed the world somewhat, and had the proposal been in effect, why, then everything that Henry Kissinger's backers and those of Bush represented today, could not have been possible. In these cases, as in Operation Juarez, and our conception of the war on drugs back in 1978-79, where we invented the war on drugs; in each of these cases, we succeeded because we went back into history, went into the fundamentals of science and other things, to search out the underlying assumptions which determined the theorems, so to speak, upon which people were acting. And because we selected our action to attack and to change those flawed, underlying assumptions which were the causes of the problem, rather than to try to patch up the problem after the fact.
That is our contribution so far to history. That is a contribution which today, obviously, is much more needed, or much more urgently needed, than at any time during the past 20 years.
I would hope that in this time frame, that the lessons of that experience, as freshly illustrated by the case of cold fusion's implications, will be assimilated, and that people would find the courage to act, and to act on the basis, not that we are assured of success, but that there is no acceptable alternative but to do what we must do."

Tuesday 7 July 2015

FEMA and The Rodney King Riots

On the third day of riots, suspected looters are detained at Main Street and Washington Boulevard.

"...the Pan Am plane landed in Guyana. And I talked to the air traffic controller there, who was present at the time, and he told me every Black that came off the plane was bound and gagged. "

John Judge

"...the Pan Am plane landed in Guyana. And I talked to the air traffic controller there, who was present at the time, and he told me every Black that came off the plane was bound and gagged. 

He told me that people who lived as close as 5 miles away, and I've gotten this from other sources, in the bush, did not know that there was a single Black living at Matthew's Ridge in Guyana. All they had ever seen were the Whites. 

Because the Whites were the only ones allowed in and out of the camp, allowed to have money; allowed to carry a gun; allowed to go into the city. 

In the city they were paying off Black and Indian women to sell their babies. Which they were taking back to the camp. 

And all of these people were being experimented on by Dr. Lawrence Schacht, the camp doctor, and a crew of about 40 nurses. For a population of about 1200 people, 40 nurses. 

And he was infamous for participating in the torture, for doing suturing without anesthetic. I believe that he is none other than the grandson of Hjalmar Schacht, the Reichminister of Economics, who moved to Houston Texas where Larry Schacht's family is from, at the end of the war. 

And it was Hjalmar Schacht who invented the slogan, over the gate at Auschwitz:

 Arbeit Macht Frei



"Work Makes You Free."


May 10, 1992

Los Angeles Police Differ Sharply With Prosecutors on Arrest Totals


LOS ANGELES, May 9— Reflecting the confusion that has characterized this city's response to the violence that broke out 10 days ago, prosecutors and the police are giving widely different estimates of the number of riot-related arrests. 
Police officials said today that they had arrested 18,000 people from Wednesday night, April 29, the day the riots began, through this morning. But prosecutors said they could not account for as many as 10,000 of those people. 
"We don't know where these people are," said James K. Hahn, the Los Angeles City Attorney. "It is a mystery to a lot of people in the system right now." 
Difficult Job Ahead 
Prosecutors said they had finished the initial processing of all those arrested during the riots, and only about 8,000 defendants had come through the courts. The police said they could not explain the discrepancy, but they stood by their number. 
Whatever the case, prosecutors anticipate unusual difficulties in proving the charges against the thousands of defendants arrested by harried police officers amid the chaos of the riots, in which more than 50 people were killed and hundreds of businesses were looted and burned. 
Following a week of calm, Federal troops, held in staging areas in Southern California, were awaiting orders today to return home. Deputy Hal Grant of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said the previous night had been quiet, with only routine police calls. 
Deputy Grant said the total of riot-related arrests reached 18,213 as police continued to search for and arrest people found in possession of property stolen during the rioting. He said the arrest figure was compiled from a number of sources, including the Los Angeles Police Department and from smaller cities in Los Angeles County. 
But the number of arrests in recent days has been small compared with the thousands of people rounded up by police during the height of the violence last week. 
Like Traffic Tickets 
Ira Reiner, the Los Angeles County District Attorney, said Friday that there had been only about 7,000 riot-related arrests, including 3,000 for felonies and 2,100 for misdemeanors. Mr. Reiner said that at least 2,000 people included in the police arrest total were apparently only cited by police officers and let go at the scene. 
"It's like getting a traffic ticket," said Mr. Hahn, the city attorney, whose office prosecutes misdemeanors. Mr. Hahn said he had received no paperwork on those cases from the police, who would assign the defendants court dates on the spot before releasing them on their own recognizance. 
"If there's suddenly going to be a thousand people coming into court on the same day, we need to know," Mr. Hahn said. 
A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said Friday that the department was still trying to catch up on its paperwork and it was not clear how many, if any, of those arrested during the violence were let go after being stopped and cited by the police. 
That procedure been criticized by some local officials who fear that those involved in the violence might get off too lightly. Call for Tough Prosecution 
"If it was any more than violating curfew early in the evening, they should have been arrested," said Joan Milke Flores, a member of the Los Angeles City Council, who has proposed legislation to stiffen penalties for crimes committed during rioting. Mrs. Flores criticized what she viewed as overly lenient sentences handed out by judges over the last week as hundreds of those arrested pleaded guilty to riot-related charges and were sentenced to the time they had already served in jail, usually two to four days. 
"It bothers me that these looters and burglars are going to be right back out on the streets when the National Guard leaves," Mrs. Flores said. 
Mr. Hahn said he, too, was unhappy with some of the sentences handed out. A partial review of the cases, he said, indicated that 15 to 18 percent of those arrested were convicted felons on parole or probation. Mr. Hahn said judges consistently ignored his office's requests for minimum 90-day sentences for looters, often ordering the defendants to 30 days in jail or less. 
In one case, a person caught carrying a can of kerosene during the riots was charged with violating the curfew, the only charge available, and was released almost immediately after pleading guilty, Mr. Hahn said. "That was all we could really prove," he said. 
Mr. Hahn predicted significant difficulty in proving cases against the hundreds of defendants who pleaded not guilty and requested trials.

June 1, 1992

Riots' Victims Begin Getting $638 Million in Aid


LOS ANGELES, May 31— A month after rioting swept the nation's second-largest city, financial aid promised by the Government is beginning to reach those who lost jobs, homes and businesses. 
Recipients say they are surprised and delighted to get the money this quickly. But some community leaders and local officials say thousands of people are still going hungry or homeless because of the riots, and they have called on Federal agencies to do more to make people aware of the programs and help them apply. 
When they picked up their $7,000 low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration on Thursday to rebuild a wheelchair-repair business devastated by looters, Sheila and Ernie Tousant said that before the riots they had consistently been turned down for bank loans. But the Government, Mrs. Tousant said, "removed all the red tape and actually gave us a chance." 
"I'm shocked," she said, "because I was here in the Watts riots, and I saw the money go to everyone except the people who needed it." 'Long Way to Go' 
Visiting Los Angeles on Friday, President Bush said of the rebuilding, "We have a long way to go," but he praised the Federal relief effort as "massive" and "quick." 
The Government is financing some efforts to address deep-rooted urban problems. The Justice Department, for example, is providing $19 million for anti-crime and anti-poverty programs. But the emphasis is on patching up the damage from the riots, and some residents said they were angry that money was being spent to aid business owners while little was being provided to help those who had been homeless and hungry long before the riots. 
A pastor at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church at the edge of South-Central Los Angeles said that as late as last week up to 1,500 people a day had still been arriving to pick up donated food. 
"There's a problem that's not being addressed," said the pastor, the Rev. Leonard B. Jackson. "It seems to me that if people can find the church to get food, then the Government agencies that are coming in can find us and do more to help these people." 
Evelyn White, a volunteer at an encampment for homeless people set up in South-Central Los Angeles by the Brotherhood Crusade, a black community organization, said: "Every person you see here needs aid, but they needed it before all of this started. That's why all this happened." 
Through Wednesday, nearly 15,000 people had visited one of the nine disaster application centers run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is overseeing the process of taking requests for help from victims of the riots and routing them to the appropriate Government agencies. Relatively Few Applications 
The centers offer "one-stop shopping" for people needing almost any kind of assistance, from money for food and clothing to low-interest loans for businesses. But the number of people who have actually completed applications for aid under the programs remains relatively small. 
The Small Business Administration, for example, said that although it had passed out 11,000 applications, as of Thursday it had received 528 completed requests for assistance. 
As of May 23, 4,876 people had filed claims with the state for unemployment insurance after losing jobs because of the riots. By some estimates, tens of thousands of people lost jobs, at least temporarily, because of the damage to businesses. 
"I appreciate how fast the Federal Government has moved, but we need to work harder," said Deputy Mayor Linda Griego. "And they need to work harder to do the outreach and the follow-up to make sure people are getting what they need. More Applications Expected 
Federal officials said they expected the numbers of applications to some programs, especially those for small businesses, to increase sharply in coming weeks. They said that Federal agencies had been working hard to inform the community about the programs by meeting with local groups, answering questions and providing assistance with filling out forms at the application centers. 
The city, too, has stepped up its efforts to encourage people to seek help, Ms. Griego said. Concerned that undocumented workers are not applying for aid out of fear that they might be reported to the immigration authorities or the Internal Revenue Service, the city has set up programs with churches and other groups to reassure people that none of the information from relief applications will be used against them. 
Federal officials said they were trying to shore up weaknesses in their response. Eleven days ago, after complaints that the Government was not providing food fast enough, the Agriculture Department authorized the purchase of $2 million worth of food to be distributed through food banks to riot victims. The first shipments will reach the food banks this week. 
The Agriculture Department also loosened restrictions on providing food stamps, dropping, for example, a rule disqualifying people who own cars. More Money Pledged 
President Bush pledged in the week following the riot that the Federal Government would make available almost $638 million in financial assistance through a variety of existing programs, and perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars more, depending on spending decisions made by Congress. On Friday, he said he had authorized an additional $12 million for job training and public-service jobs. 
The amount of Federal money actually disbursed since the riots is relatively small, totaling about $3.2 million as of Thursday. The largest chunk of that, $2.8 million, came from the Small Business Administration for 42 low-interest loans totaling $2.8 million, mostly to owners of small businesses that were looted or burned. 
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which had received 4,694 applications for emergency housing assistance so far, had processed 299 grants totaling $372,000. Under another program to replace personal possessions, like clothing, appliances and cars, the agency had paid out $43,000 to eight applicants as of Wednesday. 'A Great Relief Effort' 
At the Disaster Application Center at the old Ambassador Hotel on the edge of Koreatown, James Baker, his wife, Carolyn, and their 2-month-old son, James Jr., were among the more than 200 people a day who had continued to stream in during the previous week seeking aid. 
Mr. Baker said he had not found work since he lost his job as a stock person at a Newberry's discount store when it was burned in the rioting. After spending 45 minutes filling out forms and talking to officials from several government agencies and the Red Cross, he said the process of applying for help had gone very smoothly and that he had been assured he would qualify for food stamps, unemployment insurance and grants to help pay the family's rent temporarily. 
"This is a great relief effort," he said. "They have all the agencies you need here to take care of each aspect of your life." 
Photo: Aid promised by the Government is just beginning to reach those who lost jobs, homes and businesses in the Los Angeles riots. James Baker and his wife, Carolyn, with their 2-month-old son, James Jr., applied for aid at the Disaster Application Center at the old Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. (Bart Bartholomew for The New York Times) Chart: "Federal Aid to the Riot Areas" FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY Disaster Housing Assistance and Individual and Family Grants: $100 million Mortgage, rent assistance: 4,964 applications received, 299 approved, $372,000 disbursed. Personal property replacement: 1,425 applications, 8 approved, $42,987 disbursed. Public Assistance to Local Governments: $200 million Applications being prepared by local governments for grants to repair or replace public buildings destroyed in the riots. Other programs: $2.7 million Crisis counseling for people suffering psychological problems from the unrest ($2.3 million). Emergency food and shelter vouchers ($378,750). SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION Disaster Loans: $300 million Could go as high as $500 million, 11,000 applications distributed, 528 received, 42 approved, $2.8 million disbursed. LABOR DEPARTMENT Job Training Partnership: $14 million Grant to augment $20 million in state money being used for job training and employment in areas affected by the riots. AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT Food Bank purchases: $2 million Food to arrive at area food banks for distribution this week. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT Weed and Seed Grants: $19 million Local officials developing proposals to aid existing anti-crime, anti-poverty programs. TOTAL AID: $637.7 million (Sources: Federal Emergency Management Agency; State of California; City of Los Angeles.)




Faster U.S. Aid Sought for Victims of Riots, Hurricanes

October 27, 1992|PAUL LIEBERMAN | TIMES STAFF WRITER
A coalition of legal aid groups plans today to petition the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency to speed up assistance to victims of the Los Angeles riots and this year's devastating hurricanes in Florida and Hawaii.
Leaders of Los Angeles-based Public Counsel said the petition will be filed with FEMA officials in Washington seeking greater relief for tens of thousands of people who suffered damage in those three disasters. The group is also seeking aid for victims of a series of forest fires in Northern California.
"People across the country . . . have been left homeless, unemployed and frustrated by a bureaucratic maze which fails to provide the basic relief it promises," according to a statement from Public Counsel, which is coordinating the campaign. It complains that six months after the Los Angeles riots, "FEMA has disbursed less than 12% of the $300 million in emergency funds allocated to help disaster victims."
A FEMA official said that the government agency will not comment in detail until it reviews the petition. But Lorri Jean, FEMA's San Francisco-based deputy regional director, said the charges are based on "totally inaccurate" data.
"All their stats are wrong," Jean said. She put the assistance to Los Angeles riot victims at more than $100 million.
The issue of disaster aid is likely to get close scrutiny this week--and not just because of the legal aid groups' complaints.
A federal task force led by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is completing an investigation into fraud in the filing of relief applications in Los Angeles, focusing largely on store owners suspected of burning their own businesses during the riots.
Two federal officials confirmed Monday that indictments of "multiple parties" are expected to be returned Wednesday.
Established in 1978 to coordinate federal civil defense and disaster programs, FEMA has faced unprecedented demands for its resources this year with the series of natural disasters and the riots.
Cynthia D. Robbins, a directing attorney for Public Counsel, an offshoot of the Los Angeles County and Beverly Hills Bar associations, said that similar legal aid groups in the other affected areas are joining in the challenge to FEMA practices. "There is a legal group in Florida, one in Hawaii and one in Northern California . . . but there will be one petition that will be jointly filed," Robbins said.
One of their complaints is that FEMA has made it particularly difficult for low-income people and non-English speakers to get help. Latino advocacy groups in Los Angeles said it was almost impossible to get aid applications in Spanish after the riots.
But the critics and FEMA offered widely varying statistics on how many people applied for and received assistance after the many disasters--and had varying interpretations of what the data meant.
Public Counsel said that eight weeks after Hurricane Andrew swept through Florida, "FEMA had provided assistance to less than half of the 154,000 victims . . . who had applied for disaster relief." But FEMA's Jean said that as of Oct. 22, only 79,000 applications had been received for temporary housing relief. In response, she said, the agency has issued 41,000 checks totaling $86 million.
Jean added: "In fact, most people have gotten help."
In Hawaii, Public Counsel complained, a flood of 19,488 applications for assistance yielded just 3,593 temporary housing assistance checks from FEMA after Hurricane Iniki prompted the declaration of a federal disaster Sept. 12.
FEMA said that 12,786 applications had been received and that 4,774 checks were issued, totaling about $15 million. About 6,000 of the applications were "withdrawn or denied as ineligible," Jean said, many because property owners had private insurance. "When they're covered by insurance, FEMA never pays," she said.
Times staff writer Jim Newton contributed to this story.


Disaster Agency Probe Hit for Ignoring Riots

January 11, 1993|CARLA RIVERA | TIMES STAFF WRITER
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will come under unprecedented scrutiny in coming months as congressional investigators try to determine why the agency was unprepared for the onslaught of calamities that struck the nation in 1992.
But in a turn of events that some observers see as ironic and shortsighted, FEMA's response to Los Angeles' cataclysmic episode of 1992--the spring riots--is not scheduled to be the focus of any federal review. The investigations and hearings will target only FEMA's handling of natural disasters in Florida, Louisiana and Hawaii.
Many Los Angeles officials are particularly upset by the federal government's narrow focus because they believe that the city's civil disturbances, the first riots ever to be declared a federal disaster, can offer lessons about the needs of inner-city residents after such upheavals.
Much of the sharpest criticism of FEMA's relief programs has come from Los Angeles, where 50% to 60% of riot victims were denied disaster aid. Given the depth of social conflict in urban centers throughout the nation, experts say, FEMA could be called on to provide aid again to residents in many cities.
Incensed at what they believe is the snub being given the city, Los Angeles officials say they will push for federal hearings that deal exclusively with FEMA's handling of riot victims.
"I can assure you Los Angeles will see a very serious and profound hearing on FEMA's response or lack of response (to its crisis)," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D--Los Angeles).
Deputy Mayor Linda Griego said: "If Congress is going to be changing policy, then they do need input from us."
The federal investigations of FEMA include one by the General Accounting Office, which was commissioned by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D--Md.) and several other members of Congress. In addition, about 10 congressional oversight committees have indicated a desire to hold hearings on the beleaguered agency's response to the year's most devastating natural disasters.
Although GAO officials said they could not discuss the investigation until it is completed, a preliminary report concludes that FEMA is not prepared for large-scale emergencies and suggests that the federal government develop contingency plans to suit specific kinds of disasters. FEMA officials also declined to discuss the inquiry, pending release of the GAO's final report.
Stan Czerwinski, who is heading the GAO investigation, said his agency confined the scope of its investigation to natural disasters at the request of Senate and House members. He confirmed that no investigators have been sent to Los Angeles, although state disaster officials were contacted.
Aides to Mikulski and other members of Congress said the investigation was sparked by FEMA's widely criticized response to Hurricane Andrew, which devastated South Florida, and to a lesser extent, Hawaii's Hurricane Iniki. Both storms caused extensive damage to residences, leaving thousands of victims homeless, whereas the violence in Los Angles was primarily upon businesses.
A press aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), who, as chairman of the House Investigations and Oversight subcommittee, was the only Southern California representative to call for the FEMA review, said there was no intent to slight Los Angeles.
"Hurricane Andrew was handled in a manner that was not good for the victims and we didn't want that to repeat," said Melissa Dollaghan. "It's not an omission of L.A, it's just that the scope was limited to the natural disasters."
But local advocates see the federal government's exclusion of Los Angeles from the federal reviews of FEMA as part of a pattern of disregard and rejection of inner-city residents, one that has cast Los Angeles' riots victims in a highly political light.
They argue that the federal response is no surprise when, even at the state level, virtually every piece of legislation designed to speed the city's recovery has failed to pass.
The unpleasant truth of the matter, community leaders say, is that riot victims are viewed less sympathetically than the victims of natural disasters.
"The bottom line is that most of the victims are people of color," said Assemblyman Curtis Tucker (D-Los Angeles), chairman of a state committee that reviewed the causes of the Los Angeles riots. "Many of my colleagues in Sacramento asked why they should lift a finger to help when (the city's residents) brought it on themselves."
Waters said she has encountered the same view in Washington.
"As a representative of this area, I have to explain not only the root causes of the riot but that a lot of people are innocent victims who should not be penalized," she said.
Griego said much of the focus on hurricanes Andrew and Iniki may have to do with the perceptions formed by televised images of wrecked homesteads and scattered personal belongings. She disputed assertions that more attention might have been paid to Los Angeles had city officials been more vocal in their criticism of FEMA.
"I suppose we could have taken the position of bashing FEMA but I don't know that that gets the check here sooner," she said. Instead, city leaders tried to exert pressure behind the scenes but consistently ran into resistance from federal officials.
"The attitude was that this wasn't really a disaster and that FEMA really shouldn't be here," Griego said.
President Bush declared Los Angeles a disaster site after a highly publicized visit to the city a week after the violence had ended.
But state emergency officials say that federal authorities had to be persuaded that the Stafford Act, which controls declarations of a natural disaster, applied to Los Angeles.
Under amendments made in 1988, the act could be applied to a situation where fire, regardless of its origin, caused widespread destruction. This clause was used to make the case for Los Angeles.
Still, at the onset of FEMA's response to the Los Angeles riots, federal officials wanted to restrict its relief programs to those who suffered fire damage, insisting that the agency would not extend aid to victims whose homes or businesses were looted, said Richard Andrews, director of the state Office of Emergency Services.
"It is just one example of the extreme legalistic view they wanted to take," he said. "We told them it made no sense at all."
Andrews said the federal agency has also balked at reimbursing the state for more than $1 million in costs incurred staffing 10 disaster application centers and fencing about 60 demolition sites.
"FEMA has tended to view the application for assistance with a great deal of suspicion whether it is individuals or local governments, and has tended to act as if their sole responsibility is to protect the federal treasury," said the state's disaster chief.
Andrews said he has been asked to testify before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing about FEMA's handling of the Loma Prieta earthquake, but will bring up the Los Angeles crisis on his own if no one asks about it.
Frank Kishton, deputy director of disaster programs in FEMA's San Francisco office, said the agency is attempting to settle a number of outstanding eligibility issues with the state. He declined to comment on other criticisms directed at the agency. Almost from the outset, those who lost homes, livelihoods or loved ones during the riots criticized the relief effort's limited outreach to victims, the lack of bilingual staff and inability to overcome bureaucratic red tape.
Those problems prompted Los Angeles legal aid groups to file a petition against FEMA on behalf of disaster victims nationwide, calling on the agency to speed its relief efforts and provide more equitable treatment.
Disaster officials respond that statutory limitations prevented them from changing requirements that would have opened up more aid to victims.
Riot victims complain that now, when those statutes are undergoing review, they will be ignored during the process.
"I'm shocked and disappointed," said Bong Hwan Kim, a community leader who has negotiated with FEMA on behalf of Korean-American riot victims. "The federal response . . . has been far from adequate. We have data to show that too many people have fallen through the cracks. For any investigation of FEMA to ignore (Los Angeles) is something we will strongly protest to our elected representatives."
It is the consensus of people who have dealt with FEMA that the agency must be revamped or its procedures improved.
Los Angeles' riot victims and their advocates say they want to ensure that this city's painful experience informs any recommendations or proposed reforms.
"I think the majority of white voters in the state and the country . . . have to recognize they had a role in the creation of this disturbance and are going to have a stake in its outcome," Kim said.

Monday 6 July 2015

Answer to Stalin (1948)


Episode of "the March of Time" newsreel from 1948.

US & British response to Soviet aggression; Marshall Plan.

The March of Time Volume 14, Episode 17 November 26, 1948



"I don't quite understand your last point, Senator...?"

Putin is the most intelligent and capable world leader on the scene today.

Irrational Exuberance - "Don't Go There"


 

H. G. Wells and the Baby Boomers from Spike EP on Vimeo.

 

The Baby Boomer Problem = Don't Go There!

 


Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan

At the Annual Dinner and Francis Boyer Lecture of The American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C.

December 5, 1996

The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society

 

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I am especially pleased to accept AEI's Francis Boyer Award for 1996 and be listed with so many of my friends and former associates. In my lecture this evening I want to give some personal perspectives on central banking and, consequently, I shall be speaking only for myself.

 

William Jennings Bryan reportedly mesmerized the Democratic Convention of 1896 with his memorable ". . . you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." His utterances underscored the profoundly divisive role of money in his time--a divisiveness that remains apparent today. Bryan was arguing for monetizing silver at an above-market price in order to expand the money supply. The presumed consequences would have been an increase in product prices and an accompanying shift in the value of net claims on future wealth from the "monied interests" of the East to the indebted farmers of the West who would arguably be able to pay off their obligations with cheaper money.

 

The debates, before and since, over the issue of our money standard have mirrored the deliberations on the manner in which we have chosen to govern ourselves, and, perhaps more fundamentally, debates on the basic values that should govern our society.

 

For, at root, money--serving as a store of value and medium of exchange--is the lubricant that enables a society to organize itself to achieve economic progress. The ability to store the fruits of one's labor for future consumption is necessary for the accumulation of capital, the spread of technological advances and, as a consequence, rising standards of living.

 

Clearly in this context, the general price level, that is, the average exchange rate for money against all goods and services, and how it changes over time, plays a profoundly important role in any society, because it influences the nature and scope of our economic and social relationships over time.

 

It is, thus, no wonder that we at the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank, and ultimate guardian of the purchasing power of our money, are subject to unending scrutiny. Indeed, it would be folly were it otherwise.

 

A central bank in a democratic society is a magnet for many of the tensions that such a society confronts. Any institution that can affect the purchasing power of the currency is perceived as potentially affecting the level and distribution of wealth among the participants of that society, hardly an inconsequential issue.

 

Not surprisingly, the evolution of central banking in this nation has been driven by such concerns. The experiences with paper money during the Revolutionary War were decidedly inauspicious. "Not worth a Continental" was scarcely the epithet one would wish on a medium of exchange. This moved Alexander Hamilton, with some controversy, to press for legislation that established the soundness of the credit of the United States by assuming, and ultimately repaying, the war debts not only of the fledgling federal government, but of the states as well. Equally controversial was the chartering of the First Bank of the United States, which, although it had few functions of a modern central bank, was nonetheless believed to be a significant threat to states rights and the Constitution itself.

 

Although majority controlled by private interests, the Bank engaged in actions perceived to shift power to the federal government. Such a shift was thought of by many as a fundamental threat to the new democracy, and an essential element of what was feared to be a Hamilton plan to re-establish a powerful aristocracy. The First Bank--and especially its successor Second Bank of the United States--endeavored to restrict state bank credit expansion when it appeared inordinate, by gathering bank notes and tendering them for specie. This reduced the reserve base and the ability of the fledgling American banking system to expand credit. The issue of states' rights and concern about the power of the central government reflected the free wheeling individualism of that time. The Second Bank was a major issue of the election of 1832. Earlier in that year, President Andrew Jackson had vetoed the bill to extend its charter, and the election became a referendum on his veto. The outcome was a resounding victory for Jackson and the death knell for the Bank.

 

It has not been easy, however, to separate often seemingly conflicting threads in the debate between advocates of state powers over money and those seeking a national role. When Andrew Jackson vetoed the charter renewal of the Second Bank of the United States, for example, he argued for the severing of the grip on the economy of easterners and especially foreigners, who owned a significant stock interest in the bank. Ironically, by helping to create what was perceived to be an unstable currency, he set the stage for the later development of a full-fledged gold standard, the institution that Bryan railed against in 1896 from much the same populist philosophical base as Jackson.

 

After the Civil War, redemption of the paper greenbacks issued during the war brought an era of a gold-standard-induced deflation, which, while it may not have thwarted the impressive advance of industrialization, was seen by many as suppressing credit availability for the rural interests of the nation, which were still a majority. The general price level declined for more than two decades, which meant borrowers were paying off their loans in more expensive dollars than those they borrowed.

 

Not surprisingly, mounting pressures developed for reform, with Bryan bearing the standard for subsidized silver coinage, that is, free silver. Though Bryan lost to McKinley in 1896 (and again in 1900), the rural-based pressures for a more elastic currency did not diminish and ultimately were reflected, in part, in the creation of the Federal Reserve.

 

Nonetheless, many of the proponents of banking reform in the 1890s, and in the aftermath of the Panic of 1907, were suspicious of creating a central bank. In very large measure, those concerns underlay the various threads of reform that were joined together in the design and creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913. Its founding followed a prolonged debate on the balance of power between the interests of the New York money center banks and the rest of the nation, still largely rural. The compromise that resulted from that debate created twelve regional Reserve Banks with a Washington presence vested with a Federal Reserve Board. Its purpose was to "furnish an elastic currency, . . . to establish a more effective supervision of banking in the United States, and for other purposes." Monetary policy as we know it today, was not among the "other purposes." That evolved largely by accident in the 1920s.

 

Even with a central bank, the gold standard was still the dominant constraint on the issuance of paper currency and the expansion of bank deposits. Accordingly, the Federal Reserve was to play a minor role in affecting the purchasing power of the currency for many years to come.

The world changed markedly with the advent of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the evisceration of the gold standard. The upheaval, and still festering fear of New York "monied interests," engendered the Banking Acts of 1933 and more importantly of 1935, which vested more of the Federal Reserve's authority with the Board of Governors in Washington. During World War II, and through 1951, however, monetary policy was effectively subservient to the interests of the Treasury, which sought access to low-cost credit. With the so-called Federal Reserve-Treasury Accord of 1951, the Federal Reserve began to develop its current degree of independence.

 

Although in the 1950s and early 1960s there were short-lived bouts of inflation that caused momentary concern about sustained increases in the price level, these events did little to shake the conviction of most that America's economic and financial structure would indefinitely and effectively contain any inflationary forces. This prescription certainly seems to have been reflected in the low inflation premium then embedded in long-term bonds.

 

That this view was profoundly wrong soon became apparent. The 1970s saw inflation and unemployment simultaneously at relatively elevated levels for some time. The notion that this could occur was nowhere to be found in the conventional wisdom of the economic policy philosophy that developed out of the Keynesian revolution of the 1930s and its subsequent empirical applications. Moreover, these models embodied the view that aggregate demand expansion, from almost any level, would permanently create new jobs. When that expansion carried the economy beyond "full employment" there would be a cost in terms of higher inflation--but only a one-time increase in inflation, so that there existed a permanent trade off between sustainable levels of inflation and employment.

 

The stagflation of the 1970s required a thorough conceptual overhaul of economic thinking and policymaking. Monetarism, and new insights into the effects of anticipatory expectations on economic activity and price setting, competed strongly against the traditional Keynesianism. Gradually the power of state intervention to achieve particular economic outcomes came to be seen as much more limited. A consensus gradually emerged in the late 1970s that inflation destroyed jobs, or at least could not create them.

 

This view has become particularly evident in the communiques that have emanated from the high-level international gatherings of the past quarter century. That inflation could reduce employment was a highly controversial subject in the mid-1970s when introduced into communique language drafts. At the meetings I attended as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the notion invariably induced extended debates. Today in similar communiques such language is accepted boiler plate and rarely the focus of discussion. This shift in attitudes and understanding provided political support in 1980 and thereafter for the type of monetary policy required to rebalance the economy.

 

Despite waxing and waning over the decades, a deep-seated tension still exists over government's role as an economic policymaker. This tension is evident in Congressional debates, campaign rhetoric, and our ubiquitous talk shows.

 

It should not be a surprise that the very same ambiguities and conflicts that characterize the rest of our political life have their reflection in the nation's current view of its central bank, the Federal Reserve. With regard to monetary policy, the view--or at least the suspicion--still persists in some quarters that an activist, expansionary policy could yield dividends in terms of permanently higher output and employment.

Nonetheless, there is a grudging acceptance of the degree of independence afforded our institution, and an awareness that unless we are free of the appropriations process that our independence could be compromised. It is generally recognized and appreciated that if the Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions were subject to Congressional or Presidential override, short-term political forces would soon dominate. The clear political preference for lower interest rates would unleash inflationary forces, inflicting severe damage on our economy.

 

Notwithstanding, the central bank has not been immune from the suspicion and lack of respect that has come to afflict virtually all institutions in our society since the traumas of Vietnam, Watergate, and the destabilizing inflation in the 1970s.

 

The Federal Reserve's most important mission, of course, is monetary policy. I wish I could say that there is a bound volume of immutable instructions on my desk on how effectively to implement policy to achieve our goals of maximum employment, sustainable economic growth, and price stability. Instead, we have to deal with a dynamic, continuously evolving economy whose structure appears to change from business cycle to business cycle, an issue I shall return to shortly.

 

Because monetary policy works with a lag, we need to be forward looking, taking actions to forestall imbalances that may not be visible for many months. There is no alternative to basing actions on forecasts, at least implicitly. It means that often we need to tighten or ease before the need for action is evident to the public at large, and that policy may have to reverse course from time to time as the underlying forces acting on the economy shift. This process is not easy to get right at all times, and it is often difficult to convey to the American people, whose support is essential to our mission.

 

Because the Fed is perceived as being capable of significantly affecting the lives of all Americans, that we should be subject to constant scrutiny should not come as any surprise. Indeed, speaking as a citizen, and not Fed Chairman, I would be concerned were it otherwise. Our monetary policy independence is conditional on pursuing policies that are broadly acceptable to the American people and their representatives in the Congress.

 

Augmenting concerns about the Federal Reserve is the perception that we are a secretive organization, operating behind closed doors, not always in the interests of the nation as a whole. This is regrettable, and we continuously strive to alter this misperception.

 

If we are to maintain the confidence of the American people, it is vitally important that, excepting the certain areas where the premature release of information could frustrate our legislated mission, the Fed must be as transparent as any agency of government. It cannot be acceptable in a democratic society that a group of unelected individuals are vested with important responsibilities, without being open to full public scrutiny and accountability.

 

To be sure, if we are to carry out effectively the monetary policy mission the Congress has delegated to us, there are certain Federal Reserve deliberations that have to remain confidential for a period of time. To open up our debates on monetary policy fully to immediate disclosure would unsettle financial markets and constrain our discussions in a manner that would undercut our ability to function. Nonetheless, we continue to look for ways to expand the flow of information to the public without compromising our deliberations and purposes. We have recently commenced to announce all policy actions immediately (federal funds rate changes as well as discount rate changes) and have expanded the minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee.

 

For many years, the Federal Reserve has maintained what we trust is a highly sophisticated day-by-day, near real-time, evaluation of the American economy and, where relevant, of foreign economies as well. We are able, partly through our twelve Reserve Banks, to monitor continuously developments in the real world. The information supplied about local conditions by the directors of the Reserve Banks has been frequently useful in identifying emerging national trends and in evaluating their underlying regional implications.

 

The issues with which we are confronted differ in urgency over time. Inflation concerns were not a dominant factor in economic forecasting in the 1950s and early 1960s, for example. Since the late 1970s, however, such concerns have become an important element in policymaking. More recently inflation has been low, but its future course remains uncertain. The development of comfortable product, but tight labor, markets has been a crucial factor in short-term economic forecasts of recent months--a phenomenon for which there is scant historic precedent.

There is, regrettably, no simple model of the American economy that can effectively explain the levels of output, employment, and inflation. In principle, there may be some unbelievably complex set of equations that does that. But we have not been able to find them, and do not believe anyone else has either.

 

Consequently, we are led, of necessity, to employ ad hoc partial models and intensive informative analysis to aid in evaluating economic developments and implementing policy. There is no alternative to this, though we continuously seek to enhance our knowledge to match the ever growing complexity of the world economy.

 

At different times in our history a varying set of simple indicators seemed successfully to summarize the state of monetary policy and its relationship to the economy. Thus, during the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, trends in money supply, first M1, then M2, were useful guides. We could convey the thrust of our policy with money supply targets, though we felt free to deviate from those targets for good reason. This presumably helped the Congress, after the fact, to monitor our contribution to the performance of the economy. I should add that during this period we maintained a fully detailed analysis of the economy, in part, to make sure that money supply was still emitting reliable signals about the state of the economy.

 

Unfortunately, money supply trends veered off path several years ago as a useful summary of the overall economy. Thus, to keep the Congress informed on what we are doing, we have been required to explain the full complexity of the substance of our deliberations, and how we see economic relationships and evolving trends.

 

There are some indications that the money demand relationships to interest rates and income may be coming back on track. It is too soon to tell, and in any event we can not in the future expect to rely a great deal on money supply in making monetary policy. Still, if money growth is better behaved, it would be helpful in the conduct of policy and in our communications with the Congress and the public. In the absence of simple, summary indicators, we will continue our detailed evaluation of economic developments. As we seek price stability and maximum sustainable growth, the changing economic structures constantly present more analytic challenges.

 

I doubt the tasks will become any easier for the Federal Reserve as we move into the twenty-first century. The Congress willing, we will remain as the guardian of the purchasing power of the dollar. But one factor that will continue to complicate that task is the increasing difficulty of pinning down the notion of what constitutes a stable general price level.

 

When industrial product was the centerpiece of the economy during the first two-thirds of this century, our overall price indexes served us well. Pricing a pound of electrolytic copper presented few definitional problems. The price of a ton of cold rolled steel sheet, or a linear yard of cotton broad woven fabrics, could be reasonably compared over a period of years.

 

But as the century draws to a close, the simple notion of price has turned decidedly ambiguous. What is the price of a unit of software or a legal opinion? How does one evaluate the price change of a cataract operation over a ten-year period when the nature of the procedure and its impact on the patient changes so radically. Indeed, how will we measure inflation, and the associated financial and real implications, in the twenty-first century when our data--using current techniques--could become increasingly less adequate to trace price trends over time?

 

So long as individuals make contractual arrangements for future payments valued in dollars, there must be a presumption on the part of those involved in the transaction about the future purchasing power of money. No matter how complex individual products become, there will always be some general sense of the purchasing power of money both across time and across goods and services. Hence, we must assume that embodied in all products is some unit of output and hence of price that is recognizable to producers and consumers and upon which they will base their decisions. Doubtless, we will develop new techniques of price measurement to unearth them as the years go on. It is crucial that we do, for inflation can destabilize an economy even if faulty price indexes fail to reveal it.

 

But where do we draw the line on what prices matter? Certainly prices of goods and services now being produced--our basic measure of inflation--matter. But what about futures prices or more importantly prices of claims on future goods and services, like equities, real estate, or other earning assets? Are stability of these prices essential to the stability of the economy?

 

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets. We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past. But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy? We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs, and price stability. Indeed, the sharp stock market break of 1987 had few negative consequences for the economy. But we should not underestimate or become complacent about the complexity of the interactions of asset markets and the economy. Thus, evaluating shifts in balance sheets generally, and in asset prices particularly, must be an integral part of the development of monetary policy.

The public examination of Federal Reserve actions extends well beyond our stewardship of monetary policy. Our overall management of the Federal Reserve System should, and does, come under considerable scrutiny by the Congress. Since we expend unappropriated taxpayer funds, we have an especial obligation to be prudent and efficient with the use of those funds. I am not particularly concerned about the one-third of our annual $2 billion budget that is expended to provide financial services to the private sector in competition with other providers. Such services include the clearing of checks, the operation of the Fedwire system, and the processing of automated clearing house payments. We are reimbursed for those services, and at competitive prices still make a reasonable profit for the Treasury. If we became inefficient and uncompetitive, we would be priced out of the market, and eventually out of that line of business.

 

An additional one-sixth of our expenses are for providing services to the Treasury and other agencies of government for which we are subject to reimbursement with appropriated funds. For the remainder, which mainly covers monetary policy, supervision and regulation of banks, and currency operations, we have to be especially diligent, for there is no external arbiter.

 

The rapidly changing technologies of recent years are pressing us to review thoroughly our structure and operations. We have already engaged in major consolidations of operations when such consolidations have been made cost effective by the newer technologies. Although in my experience the Federal Reserve System has been responsible, efficient, and has performed well, the rapidly changing external environment frequently requires us to rethink our role and mission. Even where we can be competitive, it is not the role of a government agency, especially one vested with an unsurpassable credit rating, to seek out all available market opportunities. Accordingly, where specific priced services have become effectively and competitively provided by private sector suppliers, the Federal Reserve needs to reassess whether the extent of our participation in those services fulfills a reasonable public purpose. There are, of course, certain services that the Congress has, and will in the future, deem appropriate for us to subsidize. But these areas presumably will remain circumscribed.

 

As a step in our periodic reassessment, a special committee of Federal Reserve Board governors and Reserve Bank presidents has been set up to review our priced services operations and other Systemwide activities.

 

Another step has been to engage outside accounting firms to audit the Federal Reserve Board and the twelve Reserve Banks. We had been quite satisfied with the Board as general auditor of the Reserve Banks since 1914. But the range of activities and the reach of the Federal Reserve in recent years requires us to address the perception that we are auditing ourselves without the full arm's length relationship deemed appropriate in today's environment.

 

Finally, the substantial changes under way in bank risk management are pressing us to continuously alter our modes of supervision and regulation to keep them as effective and efficient as possible.

 

Most importantly, all of our recent initiatives, especially the strengthening of the payments system and supervision, are critical to a central mission of the Federal Reserve, to maintain financial stability and reduce and contain systemic risks. This mission is an extension of our monetary policy. Our country can not enjoy the long-run "maximum employment and stable prices" objectives we are given for monetary policy if the financial system is unstable. In this regard, the successes that most please us are not so much the visible problems that we solve, but rather all the potential crises that could have happened, but didn't.

 

Doubtless, the most important defense against such crises is prevention. Recent mini-crises have identified the rapidly mushrooming payments system as the most vulnerable area of potential danger. We have no tolerance for error in our electronic payment systems. Like a breakdown in an electric power grid, small mishaps create large problems. Consequently, we have endeavored in recent years, as the demands on our system have escalated (we clear $1-1/2 trillion a day on Fedwire), to build in significant safety redundancies. This has been costly in terms of equipment and buildings.

 

Along with our other central bank colleagues, we are always looking for ways to reduce the risks that the failure of a single institution will ricochet around the world, shutting down much of the world payments system, and significantly undermining the world's economies. Accordingly, we are endeavoring to get as close to a real time transaction, clearing, and settlement system as possible. This would sharply reduce financial float and the risk of breakdown. Meaningful progress has already been made in this direction.

 

This evening I have tried to put current central banking issues in historical context. Monetary arrangements, including central banks, naturally are under constant scrutiny and criticism. This is no less true of the Federal Reserve in 1996 than of the gold standard in 1896. Central banks need to respond patiently and responsibly to the commentary, and we need to adapt to changing circumstances in markets and the economy.

 

A democratic society requires a stable and effectively functioning economy. I trust that we and our successors at the Federal Reserve will be important contributors to that end.