**Note: We are republishing each of the 22 challenges from Catherine’s fiscal cliff article – one a week. Helps to digest them bit by bit!**
By Catherine Austin Fitts
Who is really in charge? And why are they behaving this way? The reality is that we really don’t know.
The federal finances are a symptom of a governance system with secret goals that are very different from the ones publicly stated by the front men. Those who are benefiting the most from that system consider themselves above the law. From their perspective, the system is working perfectly and as designed. Any financial system is merely part of a human governance system. It is inconceivable that we can reform a financial system without addressing the overarching governance system and a general agreement on a systems of laws and practical enforcement of those laws.
Jon Rappoport and I recently discussed this issue on The Solari Report:
Catherine: Well, I want to talk a little bit about sort of that control – just enough so we can see it. And one of the reasons that I was so keen to have the conversation with you that we’re having tonight – that we had when I saw you in California – was I had an unbelievably frustrating time in San Francisco because I kept bumping into people with grand solutions for the problems of everything that were going to make things worse.
For example, we did a series of financial salons for Sea Lane when I was in the Bay Area, and at one salon somebody came and was talking about the importance of B corporations and impact investing for solving the world’s ills. And B corporations are a kind of corporation where the founders agree to all sorts of terms and conditions, and it’s audited and approved by a not-for-profit, which is separate. And the long and short of it is it’s a way of making the world much more complicated for the honest guys and significantly increasing the risks.
And since the honest guys didn’t create the problem in the first place, the last person who needs more complexity and risks up against the bad guys are the good guys. So to me, t’s something that can be terribly misused, and it just makes matters much worse, because the last thing we need is more complexity and more rules and regulations. We need less. Impact investing is the idea that I’m going to take my money and help clean up the mess created by the people who just stole $40 trillion. To me a real solution is, “Well, let’s get the $40 trillion back.” But not taking my money and using it to finance their next scam, which I fear is the way some of this is going to be used. And so I said to the person in the middle of the salon – I said, “Wait a minute.” I said, “We have a problem, and that problem is that there is a group of people governing the planet. We’re not allowed to know who it is. That’s a guessing game. We don’t know, but we know they’re free to act outside the law, and they’re free to kill with impunity whenever they want. That’s got everybody scared to death, and that’s why all these horrible things in the financial system are happening. And the reality is you can’t solve that problem by more complex financial engineering.” And the person looked at me and said, “I know, but that’s too depressing to deal with. I just want to do something positive.”
Jon: Wow! Wow!
Catherine: I heard that again and again – I went through the same thing – several conversations on county banks, which ultimately I’ll do a Solari Report or write an article about. It was at the next salon that we had the county bank argument, and I said to somebody, “You know, all you’re going to do is make fascism easier to implement.”
And they said, “Well, I just want to do something positive. I don’t want to get into the dangerous people who have the” – you know. And I thought, “Oh, this is really scary, because we’re trying to solve a political problem with a financial solution. You can’t solve a political problem with a financial solution.” And all you can do is make life more complicated for the honest people and just load more up on the – I mean, it’s amazing the honest people are getting anything done at all.
It’s quite remarkable what they’re able to accomplish without support and at great risk. So there’s an upside-down thinking, and as I was striving to see when I was thinking about this. I have this little matrix of who and what and global and local. It’s your rows are local and global, and then your columns are who and what. And so everybody keeps talking about what – you know, so what things – so banking or community currencies as opposed to, “Well, who’s really doing this, and how do we change that?” My theory is you can have the stupidest financial system in the world, and if you have really people of great character and intelligence and ability leading it, they’ll get it to work. It’s not ideal, but they’ll get it to work. And if you put criminals on top of the most eloquently and beautifully designed financial system, you’re going to get slaughtered. So you can’t solve this with financial engineering, because that ain’t the problem. The problem we have is who’s running it and how they’re running it, and the reality is we don’t even know why they’re behaving the way they’re behaving. We can guess, but we don’t really know. So it’s very hard. This is like your doctor deciding to operate and do surgery on you when he really doesn’t know what’s wrong. It’s like, “Well, you know, I don’t really know why you’re sick, but I’m going to cut off your arm because I want to do something positive.” It doesn’t make any sense.
Jon: No.
Catherine Austin Fitts and Jon Rappoport, The Power of It, The Solari Report
The more we can understand about who is really running things and what their goals and concerns are, the more we can determine the pathways to building new, more positive alignments.
