Federalizing Stock Porforlios-or-The Big Fed Fish Stink

Nobody's Opinion:

Ron Paul won the CPAC vote for most favorite man to represent the conservative people last week. And in this Nobody's Opinion, the most important fight that Ron brings to the table is---getting rid of the Federal Reserve.

Ron has been a lone voice in Congress against the Federal Reserve for quite a few years now, and finally the American public is starting to wake up.

The Federal Reserve seems to control all our lives. in its secretive "trickle down" way. Remember Bill Clinton fawning all over Alan Greenspan year after year? Many of us really didn't get it at the time-- at least those of us who suffer from the great America educational experience, where the government is all good, our Founders were wicked men, and Martin Luther King was way greater than George Washington---and you can go ahead and eat the banana AFTER you take the condom off. (Sorry, info brain overload)

But now we do get it. Wall Street, with the help of the Federal Reserve, just downsized us, and then supersized themselves, with the help of Bush and Obama, and that gentle man, Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke.

It's hard to keep up with all the corrupt and secrets deals conducted behind closed door, but today I happened upon something I didn't know about.

Let me introduce you to the Depositary Trust & Clearing Corporation. They are a privately owned depository bank for institutional and brokerage firms only. The Federal Reserve handles all the DTCC transactions. In other words, it is owned by the same stockholders as the Federal Reserve System. It's just a front for them. The FED mandates that the DTCC process every securities transaction in the US.

Here's how it works according to Zen Gardner:

In the old days, when you owned stocks you would have the stock certificates lying in your safe. And if you needed to trade them, you needed to get them shipped off to a broker. Nowadays that would be considered very cumbersome, and it would be impractical to invest via computer or over the phone. So the shortcut was invented that the broker would hold your stocks instead of you. And in order for him to legally be able to trade them for you, the stocks were placed under their "street name". I.e. they're in the name of the brokerage, but they're just holding them in trust and trading them for you. And you're in reality the beneficiary rather than the owner.

Which is all fine and dandy if everything goes right. Now, it appears the rules were then changed so the brokers are not allowed any longer to put the stocks in their own name. Instead, what they typically do is to put the stocks into the name of "Cede and Company" or "Cede & Co" or some such variation. And the broker might tell you that it is just a fictitious name, and will explain why it is really more practical to do that than to put it in your name.

The problem with that is that it appears that Cede isn't just some dummy name, but an actual corporation that DTCC controls. And, well, if you ask anybody about this, who actually knows about it, they will naturally tell you that it is all a formality. To serve you better, of course. And, well, maybe it is. DTCC seems like a nice and friendly company. It is a private company, owned by the same people (major U.S. banks) who own the Federal Reserve Bank. And if they all stick to their job, and just keep the money and your stocks flowing smoothly, I'm sure that is all well and good. But if somebody at some point should decide otherwise, and there's a national U.S. emergency and/or the U.S. government becomes unable to pay its debts, well, they might just not give you your stocks back. Because legally they own them.

Guess what? The DTCC holds assets of 23 trillion dollars, and it had 917 trillion dollars worth of transactions in the year 2002...I wonder what it was in 2010, don't you?

To sum it up, they process the vast majority of all stock transactions in the U.S. and many other countries...and 99% of all stocks in the U.S. appears to be legally owned by them.

And shouldn't we, the citizens of the United States, at least KNOW who owns stock in the Federal Reserve Bank? And see the books? Is this any worse than Al Capone books?

Ron Paul once said, "There is something fishy about the head of the world's most powerful government bureaucracy, one that is involved in a full-time counterfeiting operation to sustain monopolistic financial cartels, and the world's most powerful central planner, who set the price of money worldwide, proclaiming the glories of capitalism. "

This Nobody agrees....the Federal Reserve and all its stockholders make Al Capone look like a tiny minnow in Lake Michigan.

It's time we elect more people in Congress to help out Ron Paul.