I have to warn you up front, this post is not at all optimistic. In fact, while writing this I’m feeling almost completely void of hope in the current structure of government in America.

Yesterday, while taking a break from a client’s project and stepping away from the Mac for a few hours, I ended up watching “Inside Job,” a documentary about the events that led to the 2008 financial collapse.

First, let me say there is much in this documentary I find off-putting. As is the case with many documentaries like this, there are some other agendas involved and you have to understand that in order to look for the information relevant to you.

For example, I find it extremely distasteful that George Soros and others like him are given a platform within the film. I feel the producers should have disclosed the fact that Soros actually wants and enables this type of activity to occur.

That said, the Soros agenda doesn’t change the facts put forth in the documentary. Or at least, most of them.

I knew a lot about the 2008 collapse, but I had no idea the depth of the connections between Washington and the banks on Wall Street. I know, I should already know this, but it’s easy to get caught up in the little “flash” stories of the day and in many cases they take away from the larger issues at hand.

But after seeing the documentary I started doing some research of my own. I looked into most of what was said and researched it all online yesterday and this morning. It’s all there. Yes, George Soros is interviewed and portrayed as “above the theft” in the documentary, but everything else is on the mark.

Truth is, we’ve all been had. We’re right smack in the middle of the greatest scam in History and you and I are paying the price for it. What’s worse, and possible the most hurtful, is that the work our founding fathers did, along with the lives lost defending it, is being trampled on and used for the benefit of thieves.

A post such as this can’t even begin to explore how big the problem is. For example, many of the leftist protests against the “rich” for damaging our society are actually accurate. The flaw in their effort is that they’ve subscribed to the notion that all wealthy people are in on it, which is not true. Also of note is the fact the leftists have allowed themselves to be brainwashed into believing that $250,000 revenue for a couple owning a small business makes them “rich.”

But the overall idea that a group of ultra-rich “Capitalists” are controlling the economy and Washington is in on it is, for the most part, dead on accurate.

As Glenn Beck is explaining today on his show on Fox News (which ironically details exactly what is laid out in “Inside Job”), it’s all a show. What’s a show? The federal reserve, the U.S. treasury and the administration holding the check book.

Getting back to Inside Job, another of their flaws is framing the story as a “regulation vs. Non-Regulation” war. This is flawed because when you accept the premise that they’re all in on it… both the banks and financial realm on Wall Street, and the people who left it to run the financial realm in government, more or less regulation changes nothing.

As an example, the film begins by discussing several banks in Europe who, after receiving massive infusions of taxpayer dollars, began to fall as a result of poor lending decisions and irresponsible compensation to those running the game. When government officials showed up at the bank, they were met with an army of attorneys. In most cases they weren’t able to get anywhere beyond the attorneys. In the few cases where the government official was able to make headway with the attorneys, the officials were simply offered a job with the bank, at a salary they couldn’t refuse.

What’s happening on Wall Street and in Washington is far worse. Now, in our case, the people controlling the “regulatory” bodies of government are the exact same people who built the scam. The people who ran the financial system in New York during the collapse are now running the federal reserve and treasury.

Whether or not we have Bush, Clinton or Obama as President matters little. All of them allowed Wall Street to place their power brokers in positions of power within government.

Don’t believe me? Let’s scratch the surface a little…

Timothy Geithner – United States Secretary of the Treasury under Barack Obama

n March 2008, he arranged the rescue and sale of Bear Stearns.[12][21] In the same year, he played a supporting role to Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, in the decision to bail out AIG just two days after deciding not to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy. Some Wall Street CEOs subsequently expressed the opinion that decisions in which Geithner participated, especially the failure to rescue Lehman, contributed to worsening the global financial crisis.[22] As a Treasury official, he helped manage multiple international crises of the 1990s[14] in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand.[15]

Geithner believes along with Henry Paulson, that the United States Department of the Treasury needs new authority to experiment with responses to the financial crisis of 2007–2011.[12] Paulson has described Geithner as “[a] very unusually talented young man…[who] understands government and understands markets.”[21]

Henry Paulson – United States Secretary of Treasury under George Bush

He joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm’s Chicago office under James P. Gorter. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then, Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998;[9] eventually succeeding Jon Corzine as chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was US$37 million in 2005, and $16.4 million projected for 2006.[10] His net worth has been estimated at over $700 million.

Also of note are comments such as this one:

“Well, as you know, we’re working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.”

That comment came via Henry Paulson before September of 2008, when the financial system began to freefall into collapse.

And let’s not forget, Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke led the charge to reward Wall Street’s terrible financial scam with a $700 billion check from the taxpayers.

Ben Bernanke – Chairman, Federal Reserve

On February 1, 2006, President Bush appointed Bernanke to a fourteen-year term as a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and to a four-year term as Chairman.[27][28] By virtue of the chairmanship, he sits on the Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversees the Troubled Asset Relief Program. He also serves as Chairman of the Federal Open Market Committee, the System’s principal monetary policy making body.

This happened, of course, after Bernanke “served” as a leader of the “advisers” who consulted our decisions on the global economy.

In June 2005, Bernanke was named Chairman of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and resigned as Fed Governor. The appointment was widely viewed as a test run to ascertain if Bernanke could be Bush’s pick to succeed Greenspan as Fed chairman the next year.[26] He held the post until January 2006.

We could go on, and on, and on and on… but the point is that the individuals who drove the car off the cliff were handed the keys to the new car. And that car contains the power to funnel billions and billions of taxpayer dollars to those who already showed their interest is simply to defraud the nation of its wealth, and to do so through the federal government.

So while we all talk about cutting spending here and there, Facebook and the President, a birth certificate issue and whatever else is on the talking points of the day, there is a large group of individuals pulling off the greatest theft in the History of man.

That’s a profound realization that I’m guessing most Americans would prefer ignore.

-Eric Odom

UPDATE: What kind of numbers are we talking about? Try $12.3 TRILLION as a start.

If you still had any question as to whether or not the United States is now the world’s preeminent banana republic, the final verdict was just delivered and the decision was unanimous. The ayes have it.

Any fairytale notions that we are living in a nation built on the rule of law and of the global economy being based on free market principles has now been exposed as just that, a fairytale. This moment is equivalent to everyone in Vatican City being told, by the Pope, that God is dead.

UPDATE 2: It’s actually HIGHER than $12.3 TRILLION