Wednesday, 9 June 2004, 2:55 pm
Column: Catherine Austin Fitts
Mapping The Real Deal
An Open Letter to
John D. (“Jerry”) Hawke, Jr.
Comptroller of the Currency
United States Treasury
by Catherine Austin Fitts
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Forward from the Author:
The Solari Opportunity
The Solari Model aligns financial and living capital in a place so that a partnership of local and global investors can make money from creating peace, healing the environment and supporting safety and beauty.
The Solari Opportunity starts with citizens “voting” with our money in the marketplace to withdraw deposits, purchases and investments from banks, media and companies that promote corrupt government, organized crime and warfare. Each of us then uses our power in the marketplace to decentralize our economic activity in a manner that advantages our family, friends, neighbors and ourselves. So we withdraw our financial support from those doing harm and shift our financial support to “vote” for ourselves, those we love and the organizations that support us and all living things. In so shifting our intentions, we align our financial transactions with our spiritual prayers and meditations in a manner that invites the unifying power of the divine and all living things to start to be for us in a new and marvelous way.
The Solari Opportunity starts with citizens pooling our transactions to vote with our money. We can then reduce our debt and invest in our local businesses and encourage our local investment leadership to start a Solari — a locally controlled investment databank and equity investment advisor for our community. A Solari strives to provide transparency to community members on the local flow of government and central banking resources contiguous to the boundaries of political jurisdiction in which we vote for representation (e.g., State Legislator, Congressmen, Senator, Governor, Mayor, County Executive, etc.).
Creating easily understood “money maps” for busy people helps us to understand how our money works locally. This is the information we need to “vote with our money,” to hold our elected officials accountable and to reengineer government resources from a negative to a positive return on investment to our community. We create a powerful engine for community health and investor wealth creation if we combine reengineering governmental flows with community currencies and equity financing for local small business, real estate and municipal privatization
One way to understand the power of this opportunity is to understand the efforts employed by both the public and private sectors to stop my efforts to prototype and implement the Solari Model.
The Great Unifier – Cleaning Our Money
On one hand, I sound like a bill collector for a small business in my letter last week to John D. Hawke, Jr., Comptroller of the Currency, US Treasury. On the other hand, my letter is also about the intentional prevention of transparency and accountability in the US governmental financial operations which is crosscutting to the issues that have been the topics of my “Mapping the Real Deal” column in Scoop for the last two years.
Step back and look across many different issues – from 9/11 profiteering to widespread environmental degradation, to suppression of alternative health care and energy technologies, to space weaponry, to narcotics trafficking and the war on drugs, to the explosion of private prisons, to manipulation of the gold, mortgage and other capital markets and ask the question, “Who is doing this?” In each instance, “corporate welfare” is provided –directly or indirectly– on a non-transparent basis through the US Treasury and the New York Federal Reserve and its member banks who serve as the depository for the US Treasury. In short, private investors can get away with this because they can control the money and resources we need to be sustianable through their control of the governmental financial apparatus outside the parameters of the Constitution and the law to profit at the expense of our health, wealth, safety and spiritual well being.
This raises a critical strategic questions for all activists. Do we want to stay divided into many groups who are individually against the many symptoms of a dirty governmental financial apparatus? Or do we want to unify to be for transparency and accountability of our money and getting back money and securities stolen from the US Treasury? It seems to me that unifying around cleaning up the money is the way to go.
Americans want to be for something positive – something that will deal successfully with corruption and dirty money in a manner that is sustainable. Sustainability means that it supports our bread and butter commitments to care for our family and individual responsibilities. Transformation to sustainability on the planetary level in the long term must translates into sustainability at the individual level in the short term. The pathway is one that increases intimacy and community, saves us time, saves us money, creates a job or business and/or otherwise gives us energy. By shifting resources to the care, use and management of those who are trustworthy, we move towards sustainability in a manner that reduces risk rather than increases it.
If we succeed at illuminating and bringing accountability to the crosscutting money issues, we will switch the jobs and flow of capital investment back to the management of the honest folks on a basis and at a price which is attractive to them and their families. This is the key to continued faith in the rule of law — and, hence, the continuation of financial liquidity and the explosion of new wealth that is possible from the aligning of our financial values with our spiritual values, the introduction of new energy technology and healing the environment.
How does the Hawke Family Make Money?
John D. “Jerry” Hawke, the Comptroller of the Currency and former Under Secretary of Domestic Finance, has been at the heart of the absence of transparency and accountability in both Clinton and Bush Administration. During this period we have experienced Enron’s collapse and its offshore bank deals and energy market fraud, a mortgage and housing bubble, the manipulation of the gold markets, the explosive growth of money laundering, American complicity in the fall of the Russian and economy and World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organization policies and lending that drive emerging market countries and their people into bankruptcy and grinding poverty.
Jerry Hawke has presided over the stripping of America’s community assets and the intentional financial devastation of the American middle class. If the truth be known, the US government mortgage credit system and government sponsored “community programs” are the most egregious domestic predatory lenders in the history of our nation.
The list of occurrences on Hawke’s watch include the exploitation of the events of 9/11 to cover up more than $3.3 trillion missing from the US Treasury and to create new windfall revenues for the banks that serve as depository for the US Treasury accounts from which this money is missing. These are the same banks that Jerry Hawke is supposed to regulate.
Click for big version
Cui Bono? – Was the 9/11 response good for Citicorp’s investors?
The story is, however, even darker. Because the story of what happened to me and my colleagues when we attempted to teach communities how to create a positive pathway from the financial terrorism that is descending on us as a society reveals that the Hawke family profited personally. The absence of financial transparency and accountability always translates into the personal profit and/or blackmail of those who actively prevent honest folks from implementing and communicating lawful and positive solutions.
My story underscores the intentionality of what is happening. It helps to illuminate who manages the $500 billion to $1 trillion of US financial system money laundering and our collective dependency on dirty money. What would have happened if our software tools, transactions and ideas were free to spread through communities virally? Would financial sunshine have prevented the events of 9/11 and many other events of piracy and warfare? I believe so. When you understand why, you will learn much about our opportunity to transform to a sustainable culture and economy. This opportunity is why I have worked for years to get paid – I am eager to invest in something wonderful.
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June 4, 2004
John D. Hawke, Jr.
Comptroller of the Currency
250 E. Street, SW
Washington, DC 20219
Dear. Mr. Hawke:
An essential step in protecting the integrity of the regulatory process is supporting the people who provide leadership within that process. The management of our resources is transparent and lawful when individuals in positions of responsibility are personally accountable for managing them under the high fiduciary standards required by law. Supporting the individuals employed by the government to assist in this task involves paying them what you owe them for services rendered and enjoyed by the government.
For almost seven years, I have tried to get my former company, Hamilton Securities, paid for work that saved the federal mortgage credit system more then $2.2 billion (as calculated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Office of Management and Budget and confirmed by a subsequent audit conducted by the General Accounting Office). My polite requests, repeated paperwork filings, administrative appeals and, finally, court actions, have been to no avail.
I called your office in the first week of September, 2001 regarding my efforts to get our outstanding bills paid. You did not return my call, although your assistant later insisted that you told her you did. My impression was that communications were not open, so I concluded that it was best to continue to seek a solution through the courts.
A federal court has now affirmed that Hamilton did not breach its contract with the federal government; rather, it is the government that has breached its contract with Hamilton. Enclosed please find a copy of the order of judgment issued by the Court of Federal Claims on April 19, 2004, which states, in pertinent part:
“In light of the court’s prior determination that neither the 18505 Contract nor Task Order I required Hamilton to run an optimization model utilizing “bid floors” to yield HUD “maximum sales proceeds” on the North/Central Sale, the court finds that HUD breached the 18505 Contract in failing to promptly pay Hamilton for work performed under the 18505 Contract….. Accordingly, the court enters judgment for Hamilton in the amount of $1,505, 256, plus any interest according to law….”
For full text see: http://www.solari.com/gideon/legal/98-169C/2004.04.19 Final Judgment.pdf
Following the receipt of this order, my attorneys told me that the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) had informed them that HUD would not pay the judgment. In May, DOJ filed a motion for reconsideration. We expect HUD to appeal the judgment if the court denies HUD’s motion for reconsideration and I have been advised to expect the appeals process to take years. We are also informed that HUD does not intend to pay an additional $600,000 in contract close-out and termination expenses owed to Hamilton.
I am confident that you are familiar with this situation. You were the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance when Hamilton’s primary contract was terminated “for the convenience of the government” by HUD, a number of capable officials were forced out of federal mortgage credit leadership and the housing finance policies Henry Cisneros, as Secretary of HUD, instituted to save billions of tax dollars, were reversed, resulting in an explosion of mortgage credit and a refusal by HUD to produce statutorily required audited financial statements. The year after our contract was terminated, HUD’s Inspector General reported that HUD had made “undocumentable adjustments” of $59 billion.
Hamilton’s problems originated from a “qui tam” (whistleblower) lawsuit filed in 1996, brought by Ervin & Associates, a HUD contractor, in the name of the government as permitted under the Federal False Claims Act. Your son, Daniel Hawke, filed the original lawsuit as one of the lead attorneys for Ervin and pursued the case for four years before withdrawing as counsel of record. I have provided significant documentation at our website www.solari.com that helps to illuminate his conduct in this matter.
In a recent article in the New York Times, you are quoted as saying, “It’s a fair criticism of our supervision of Riggs that we let things go on too long.” From this statement I conclude that you agree with me that it is never too late to do the right thing.
I have tried calling HUD to request a meeting from the Secretary, Alphonso Jackson. He has not responded. Will you help me get paid? I would appreciate your assistance. As the banks you supervise will tell you, waiting six to nine years for numerous bills to be paid is a long time for a small business to wait.
My attorneys and I are scheduled to resume the “qui tam” trial in the DC Federal District Court on July 15. For almost seven years, my family and I have funded the expenses related to eighteen governmental audits, investigations and inquiries and my insurance company and I have funded attorneys’ fees related to twelve lawsuits, all resulting from or inspired by the original, frivolous “qui tam” lawsuit.
If HUD were to pay the judgment, I would have the resources necessary to do a good job providing a defense in the lawsuit that started this mess. It goes without saying that the ideal resolution would be for the Department of Justice to move to dismiss this suit, since it agreed back in 2000 to allow Ervin to drop the claims against our original “deep pocket” co-defendants, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock Capital and OCWEN. From this action, it was obvious four years ago that a purpose of the suit was to run out of government those who protected the integrity of the federal mortgage credit regulatory process and not to right any wrong perpetrated against the government.
I look forward to working with you to fashion a positive solution to a situation that has been allowed to get too messy and go on for “too long.”
Very truly yours,
Catherine Austin Fitts, President
The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc.
Hamilton Securities Advisory Services, Inc.
c/o Solari, Inc.
PO Box 157
Hickory Valley, TN
Attachment: Final Judgment, April 2004
cc: Michael Oxley, Chairman, House Financial Services Committee
Sue W. Kelly, Vice Chairwoman, House Financial Services Committee
Barney Frank, House Financial Services Committee
Ron Paul, Member, House Financial Services Committee
Richard Shelby, Chairman, Senate Banking Committee
Paul Sarbanes, Ranking Member, Senate Banking Committee
Wayne Allard, Member Senate Banking Committee
Lincoln Chaffe, Member, Senate Banking Committee
John S. Corzine, Member, Senate Banking Committee
Christopher J. Dodd, Member, Senate Banking Committee
Rick Santorum, Member, Senate Banking Committee
John E. Sununu, Member, Senate Banking Committee
Stephen Friedman, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council
John Ashcroft, Attorney General of the United States
Alphonso Jackson, Secretary of Housing & Urban Development
Elliot Spitzer, Attorney General of the State of New York
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Afterword from the Author:
Would you like to see me and my team teach citizens, local business leaders and investors about the Solari Opportunity? You can help by keeping us in your prayers and by making a donation. Another way you can help is to write a letter to Mr. Hawke telling him that he should make sure that the US government pays its bills to those who protect the integrity of the US credit and financial system. While you are at, feel free to let Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson and Attorney General John Ashcroft know you want our bills paid — as well as any of your Congressional representatives who sit on the House Financial Services Committee, Senate Banking, or the appropriations and government operations/reform committees that oversee the Department of Justice, HUD and the US Treasury. Let us know what they say!
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Background Links
John D. Hawke- Bio
http://www.ffiec.gov/exam/hawke.htm
Solari — Litigation:
http://www.solari.com/gideon
Where is the Collateral?
http://www.whereisthemoney.org/S00223_collateral.htm
The Myth of the Rule of Law
http://www.solari.com/gideon/q301.pdf
The Story of Edgewood Technology Services
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0207/S00101.htm
Missing Money – Articles and Links
http://www.solari.com/learn/missingmoney.htm
Black Budget & the Manipulation of the Mortgage Markets
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/AustinFitts.html
The Solari Opportunity:
Solari
http://www.solari.com
Solari & the Rise of the Rule of Law
http://www.solari.com/solari
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* Catherine Austin Fitts is the President of Solari, Inc, an investment advisor (in formation). She is a former Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration, a former managing director and member of the board of Dillon, Read & Co, Inc. and President of The Hamilton Securities Group, Inc. Catherine is a member of the Advisory Board of Sanders Research Associates, a member of the board of 911Truth.org and a founder of UnAnsweredQuestions.org . She writes the “ Mapping the Real Deal” column for Scoop Media New Zealand. E-Mail: “Communicate with Catherine” forum at http://www.solariactionnetwork.com
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