- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: JIM Bell is now a giant dead weight on our great cypherpunk revolution
by professor rat 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

JIM BELL asks... Where was the discussion where people concluded that Assange was a "fascist"? Julian Assange recognised that the language of what amounted to the WikiLeaks Manifesto might appear a little “overblown”. He recognised that it had about it too much the flavour of “anarchy”. But in general when it was written he was pleased. John Young was not. In early January 2007 he decided that WikiLeaks was a CIA-backed fraud. “Fuck your cute hustle and disinformation campaign. Same old shit, working for the enemy … Fuck 'em all.” “We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly but not entirely a feint,” Assange cryptically replied..." https://cryptome.org/0003/assange-manne.htm And, as you lean Libertarian Party USA, JB... https://reason.com/2011/02/03/julian-assange-and-israel-sham/ Plenty more where that came from. Going by Jacob Appelbaums description of Tim May as fascist, there is as much - or more - evidence Julian Assange is one. Caveat lecter.

2 1

Re: JIM Bell is now a giant dead weight on our great cypherpunk revolution
by professor rat 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

Put to one side for the moment whether or not Assmange is fascist or not. Does his journalism or activism or ' cypherpunk revolution' , whatever justify our solidarity and support? I would say, " No' , based on his record. He himself washed his hands of everything up to mid-2013 anyway. ( " I can rule from abroad " interview - July 2013 ) Then his anti-Hillary work was great and well worth supporting by all cypherpunks. But the problem here is attribution. That election was so close its hard to say if his contribution was decisive. Give him the benefit of the doubt and then new problems crop up with his closeness to Camp Trump. Summing up - whatever small good he did in his active period - 2005 - 2019 its negated by the piles and piles of bad. Closer to Alex Jones and Hannity than Woodward and Bernstein. Nothing really consequential to see here - sound and fury signifying nothing. A tale told by an idiot - and Pooter / LOL-GOP puppet.

1 0

Re: Cuba and Haiti - USA Blamed With Its Ties to Propaganda, Assassination, Mercenaries, Oppression
by professor rat 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > https://news.antiwar.com/2021/07/13/miami-mayor-says-the-us-should-consider… notice how the same US govt turd ..." Yes. Fuck yes! And I'm sick and tired of listening to this driveling pro-USA govt propagandist asshole. Fuck him and all the NAZI FAG MORONS ( Semich, Batshit, etc ) who sail in him.

1 0

Destabilization: Nuclear War Pending
by grarpamp 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

Shit getting weirder... Be prepared... Chinese Communist Party Officials Share Viral Video Urging Nuclear Strikes On Japan Bombers being intercepted, warning shots being fired against ships. Racist propaganda being pushed and fomented worldwide.. "Sick Of Westie Whites" Blatant Anti-White, Anti-Asian Racism In Schools Fake social justice warriors just got caught lying to a judge... https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1411882228423041024 Several Colombians Arrested In Haiti Assassination Received US Military Training says Pentagon Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont - in more or less an official 'oops,' chalked it up to 'a grim reminder that US assistance to other countries can take unexpected turns.' US Air Force Plane Makes Unannounced Landing In Taiwan, Outraging Beijing On Thursday a United States Air Force plane briefly touched down an Taipei's international airport, enraging China over what it perceives as another severe violation of the 'One China' policy, also coming a month after a group of US Senators visited Taiwan in a large military cargo plane. The US initially didn't explain why the short stop happened, which was described in local media reports as "unannounced". It prompted a statement out of Beijing saying "Any foreign military planes landing in Taiwan need China’s approval," according to Bloomberg citing a defense ministry official statement. The Chinese statement reiterated prior warnings that the United States must "not play with fire" and to "immediately stop its risky and provocative actions." The defense ministry statement also vowed to destroy any "attempts" toward "Taiwan "independence".

1 0

JIM Bell is now a giant dead weight on our great cypherpunk revolution
by professor rat 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

The Jim Bell Project operating in US jurisdiction is entirely in keeping with the last part of the AP essay - the part all media commentary ignores completely. No reason to cast any doubt on Jims bona fides there. The problem with him now though is his support for a known fascist - Julian Rand Paul Assmange. So if he has any friends they may want to arrange an urgent intervention. I think the most suspect agents on the present list are obvious - Batshit Crazy - Gramps and Semich - the three stooges.

3 3

South Africa Melts Down, Normalcy Bias Proves Foolish Once Again
by grarpamp 16 Jul '21

16 Jul '21

"This Is Deliberate Sabotage" - South African Insider Warns This "Terrorism Has Been Coming For A Long Time" by Andre Bothma, South Africa. In KwaZulu-Natal province, where Zuma is from, supporters of the former president launched a massive, coordinated protest campaign against his incarceration. Freeways were blocked with burning tires. Vehicles were stoned. Trucks set alight across the province. And then the looting and arson started in Durban and Pietermaritzburg, two of the province’s largest cities. South Africa, once again, is making global headlines for all the wrong reasons. In case you missed the news, last week former President Jacob Zuma was sentenced to 15 months in prison for failing to appear at a corruption inquiry. It was probably a calculated risk on his part; had Zuma actually appeared at the tribunal, he may very well have been convicted and sentenced to a much harsher punishment. And when his sentence was announced, many South Africans gave a collective sigh of relief; it had been a long-overdue victory for the rule of law. But then, virtually overnight, things started falling apart — rapidly. First it was just small shops. But then entire shopping malls were looted and burned to the ground. Once the shopping malls were in ashes, these “mostly peaceful” protesters moved on to torch distribution centers and loot cargo containers in Durban’s harbor. They even rampaged against some of the region’s critical infrastructure, going as far as setting a water treatment facility on fire. At this point the riots were still localized to the KwaZulu-Natal region, Zuma’s home turf. But then the rioters started agitating for protests to break out in Johannesburg, the country’s economic capital… Nobody thought the violence was going to spread there; Johannesburg is not a Zuma stronghold, and the locals there enjoy a much greater level of affluence than those living in Zuma’s native KwaZulu-Natal. And yet, overnight, the violence spread to Johannesburg. Bear in mind that South Africa’s national police force has been recently ‘defunded’, with a massive 11.8 billion rand (roughly $750 million) budget cut. For South Africa, that’s a staggering sum of money. So with a heavily defunded police force unable to quell the violence, more ‘mostly peaceful’ protestors rampaged across these two key provinces, specifically targeting supply chain infrastructure. On Monday night, for example, rioters brazenly looted a BLOOD BANK while being filmed on live television. As things stand today, the Johannesburg and Durban downtown areas look like war zones. I live in Cape Town, which so far hasn’t erupted. But the atmosphere here is tense; people are justifiably worried. Yesterday afternoon I came home to find a police NYALA (a NYALA is an armored 4×4 riot control vehicle) speeding past my house. And the panic buying has already begun; I waited in line for ages last night at my local grocery store, only to find that many major product categories were totally sold out. The line of cars waiting outside our local petrol station told the same story. Economic analysts and observers are now sounding the alarm over food security risks; they’re saying that all the looting and burning of major infrastructure and distribution centers could cause a food shortage. But South Africa is already running out of food — the shortages are here! Across Durban, finding products like bread, milk and insulin for sale has become almost impossible. The few shops that are brave enough to remain open are selling loaves of bread for 4-5X the normal price. And good luck finding any petrol anywhere in the city. As of yesterday, the body count stood at 70. Over a billion dollars in damages to businesses and public infrastructure. Supply chains decimated and investor confidence gone… Thousands of retail jobs, gone for good, and even more at risk. The rational person needs to be intellectually honest about what’s happening right now: this is deliberate violence and sabotage designed to destroy critical infrastructure and terrify people, all in an effort to influence public policy (and free Jacob Zuma). But there’s a word for this: terrorism. And it’s been coming for a long time. South Africa has long been home to instability, corruption, and tension. We have politicians like Julius Malema who pour gasoline on racial tensions and threaten to seize private property. It’s clear that South Africa has been declining gradually. But then all this violence broke out very suddenly, practically overnight. As Simon often writes, it’s like how Hemingway described going bankrupt: “gradually, then suddenly.” Human beings are easily susceptible to normalcy bias — the bizarre voice in our heads that tells us “everything will be OK” even when the warning signs are completely obvious. Our brains simply cannot comprehend that tomorrow could be radically different than today… and that our world could be turned completely upside down. It is for reasons like these that Sovereign Man consistently writes about having a Plan B, which Simon describes as something like an insurance policy. But you can’t wait until your house is already on fire before thinking about an insurance policy. Yesterday, I spoke with a successful business owner based in KwaZulu-Natal. He runs a franchise business, and scores of shops just like his have already been looted and burned to the ground nearby. He and his wife are almost at retirement age, and have had the means to get a Plan B in place for at least the last decade. But they didn’t. They procrastinated. They put off taking action because there was no clear and present threat compelling them to do so. Now, at a time where literally no one in their right mind wants to buy commercial property in their city, they are looking to liquidate their assets to get a Portuguese Golden Visa, which gives them a flexible second residency option in Europe. Given that the application process takes several months to complete, even outside of Covid times, they’re way too late. Having a great Plan B requires NOT procrastinating… and taking the appropriate steps for your situation BEFORE anything terrible happens, while you still have the resources and presence of mind to do so. Because if you wait until the proverbial hits the fan, you’ll probably be too frantic and panicked to be thinking clearly about rational solutions. Don’t give in to normalcy bias and assume that everything will always be OK. The last 18 months should be reminder enough that things can (and do) change very quickly. Two weeks ago, South Africa was still a relatively well-functioning country. Yet the “civil” in civil society has been proven to be a precariously thin veneer.

1 0

OpenFabs, OpenHW, OpenAudit - OpenPower Libre SOC Goes to Print
by grarpamp 15 Jul '21

15 Jul '21

https://openpowerfoundation.org/libre-soc-180nm-power-isa-asic-submitted-to… https://libre-soc.org/ http://git.libre-soc.org/ https://libre-soc.org/openpower/sv/svp64/ https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt/ https://openpowerfoundation.org/openpower-foundation-provides-microwatt-for… https://github.com/The-OpenROAD-Project/OpenLane http://coriolis.lip6.fr/ https://gitlab.com/Chips4Makers/c4m-pdk-freepdk45 https://chips4makers.io/ https://www.ngi.eu/ngi-projects/ngi-pointer/ https://openpower.foundation/groups/isa/ ProTip: Doesn't matter how your OpenHW is, unless you're printing it in an #OpenFab operating under an #OpenAudit environment whatever comes off the line is still untrustable. "We're building a chip. A fast chip. A safe chip. A trusted chip," explains the web page at Libre-SOC.org. "A chip with lots of peripherals. And it's VPU. And it's a 3D GPU... Oh and here, have the source code." Libre-SOC's entirely Libre 180nm ASIC, which can be replicated down to symbolic level GDS-II with no NDAs of any kind, has been submitted to IMEC for fabrication. It is the first wholly-independent Power ISA ASIC outside of IBM to go Silicon in 12 years. Microwatt went to Skywater 130nm in March; however, it is also developed by IBM, as an exceptionally well-made Reference Design, which Libre-SOC used for verification. Whilst it would seem that Libre-SOC is jumping on the chip-shortage era's innovation bandwagon, Libre-SOC has actually been in development for over three and a half years so far. It even pre-dates the OpenLane initiative, and has the same objectives: fully automated HDL to GDS-II, full transparency and auditability with Libre VLSI tools Coriolis2 and Libre Cell Libraries from Chips4Makers. With €400,000 in funding from the NLNet Foundation [a long-standing non-profit supporting privacy, security, and the "open internet"], plus an application to NGI Pointer under consideration, the next steps are to continue development of Draft Cray-style Vectors (SVP64) to the already supercomputer-level Power ISA, under the watchful eye of the upcoming OpenPOWER ISA Workgroup. https://patents.google.com/patent/US8664047B2/en

1 1

Exploits: Intel CPU Backdoors, More Undocumented Instructions
by grarpamp 15 Jul '21

15 Jul '21

https://github.com/chip-red-pill/udbgInstr/raw/main/paper/undocumented_x86_… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eSAF_qT_FY God Mode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA_DrBwkiJA Lern about puters and proggies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrksBdWcZgQ Crunch Mode https://drwho.virtadpt.net/files/mov.pdf http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/vax/780/fiche/EP-ES0AA-DL-124_1of6_780uCod… ABSTRACT At the beginning of 2020, we discovered the Red Unlock technique that allows extracting microcode (ucode) and targeting Intel Atom CPUs. Using the technique we were able to research the internal structure of the microcode and then x86 instructions implementation. We found two undocumented x86 instructions which are intendent to control the microarhitecture for debug purposes. In this paper we are going to introduce these instructions and explain the conditions under which they can be used on public-available platforms. We believe, this is a unique opportunity for third-party researchers to better understand the x86 architecture. 1 Introduction The existence of undocumented mechanisms in the internals of modern CPUs has always been a concern for information security researchers and ordinary users. Assuming that such mechanisms do exist, the main worry is that it might be possible to bypass the implemented CPU protection mechanisms that control access to memory and peripherals containing personal user data. It is considered to be unacceptable for a processor manufacturer or any other organization to be able to get unauthorized access to data that the user regards as confidential by bypassing documented, well-known protection mechanisms and using methods that only the manufacturer knows about (whether those methods are based on the processor functionality or are intentionally designed for such purposes, or have a legitimate purpose but also allow bypassing protection due to certain architectural properties). Such mechanisms include the following: 1. Special CPU operating modes in which standard access control rules do not work or work differently compared to what is described in the documentation (for Intel CPUs, it is the Software Developer's Manual [1], which is intended for developers of applications running on Intel processors). 2. Special CPU microarchitectural states in which certain access control rules can be violated (for example, such states can be achieved by performing a specific instruction sequence). 3. Undocumented CPU instructions that allow bypassing protection mechanisms (for example, memory protec- tion) and grant special privileges to the calling code. The existence of such undocumented capabilities in Intel processors has always been a subject for debates and speculations among information security specialists. For more than 40 years of the existence of the x86 architecture, a number of significant studies have been conducted on this subject [2],[3],[4]. Several undocumented features have been discovered (e.g. undocumented instructions described in [3]), including one that allows bypassing implemented protection [5], but this was found for very old Intel processors (80286 and 80386). Thereafter no apparent undocumented methods to gain unauthorized access have been found in x86 processors manufactured directly by Intel. This is leaving aside multiple recently discovered transient execution vulnerabilities and data leaks caused by side-channel attacks (such as Meltdown and Spectre), which are by no means intentional and are generally admitted to be design errors due to prioritizing higher performance over security. However, our research team managed to find at least two undocumented x86 instructions and a special processor debugging mode called Red Unlock (detailed information about the mode is given in a separate section of this paper) in actual Intel CPUs. Combined, these capabilities make it possible to completely bypass the existing memory protection and equipment control mechanisms. Moreover, the discovered instructions provide access to the processor at the microcode level and thus allow overriding the semantics of the main x86 instructions (that is, a set of the most important instructions in terms of security). This is by far more dangerous than, for example, violating memory protection (x86 privilege levels, or so-called protection rings) because it enables malware to be implemented at a level where it is impossible to detect it with modern protection tools and defend the system against it. We should clarify in advance that, in our opinion, these instructions were initially introduced to facilitate the debugging of processors at the microarchitecture (hardware implementation) level exclusively by Intel engineers. However, due to a total absence of available documentation on these features (including description of all the possible ways to use them), we believe that these instructions are rather dangerous and that the Red Unlock service mode intended for processor debugging must not be implemented in production parts distributed by sales outlets and utilized by end users in their everyday tasks. In our view, Intel was obliged to at least inform users about the existence of these instructions and special CPU debugging mode so that users could be aware of the risks associated with the company's products. Moreover, on some platforms it is possible to enable this CPU debugging mode using hardware means that can be accessed by the Intel Converged Security and Management Engine (Intel CSME) [6]. A number of critical arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities [7], [8] recently discovered in the Intel CSME subsystem can be exploited to switch the CPU to the debugging mode, as was demonstrated by our company's experts [9]. This makes the Red Unlock mode available for virtually anyone who wishes to use it (rather than to Intel engineers only, as it was originally intended). ... 7 Conclusion As described in this paper, we discovered two undocumented x86 instructions that allow reading and writing microarchi- tectural data and called them udbgrd and udbgwr, respectively. One of the commands supported for the instructions is the CRBUS read/write command, which can be used to modify microcode in MSROM via Patch RAM and match/patch registers. We can prove the existence of these undocumented instructions in Atom Goldmont and Atom Goldmont Plus processors - see our PoC published together with the paper [14]. We found that the instructions must be activated through MSR 0x1e6 and that the processor executes them only after performing the DFX unlock procedure called Red Unlock. In our opinion, the instructions are intended for CPU microarchitecture debugging by Intel engineers; however, the existence of such instructions poses a security threat since there is publicly available PoC code [9] that can activate the Red Unlock mode on one of the modern Intel platforms. Moreover, we demonstrated that speculative execution of microoperations (rather than macroinstructions that they implement) is possible for udbgrd/udbgwr, which needs to be thoroughly examined with regard to all present-day Intel processors. For this purpose, we created a special tool [22] that, when run on a processor, checks whether the udbgrd and udbgwr instructions can be executed on it and, if not, checks whether the processor allows speculative writing and reading of microarchitectural data when calling the instructions. This tool executes the udbgwr instruction to write a specific URAM address (Time Stamp Counter (TSC) multiplier used by the rdtsc x86 instruction), which is known for Big Cores as well as for Atom Goldmont, and then attempts to read the written data using architectural mechanisms available in User Mode. The tool also tries to speculatively read the TSC multiplier in URAM with the udbgrd instruction by using CPU cache as a mechanism to retrieve the read data. On top of that, we were the first to publicly provide a list of all (as far as we can tell) possible ways to activate the Red Unlock mode for CPU debugging and to demonstrate that some of them are rather dangerous (for example, software-based unlocking via Intel CSME and PUNIT firmware and processor-specific OTP configuration).

1 0

[wrong][spam] Public private keys, etc
by Karl 15 Jul '21

15 Jul '21

I just made a Trust Wallet account! It is an android ethereum application. Ethereum works with any client language and there are apis for lots, but dapps focus on web browsers. Luckily most of the backend is usually language-independent. My account recovery phrase is: group gun canal ocean know problem kitchen change sport volcano mixed easily . It is my request that this recovery phrase, and what it may be used with, be shared with the whole world freely!

3 4

Cryptocurrency: End The FED and Central Banks
by grarpamp 15 Jul '21

15 Jul '21

Radical Fed Morphs From Central Bank To Bailout Kingpin... And Americans Aren't Paying Attention https://wallstreetonparade.com/2021/07/the-federal-reserve-has-radically-ch… https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/GAO-Fed-Investigation-1.p… https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/10/federal-reserve-spokesman-explains-h… https://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/01/one-day-after-frontline-airs-critica… https://wallstreetonparade.com/2013/04/pbs-drops-another-bombshell-wall-str… http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/adm/loeb/08newsservices.pdf https://wallstreetonparade.com/2015/11/ben-bernanke-is-still-keeping-the-se… http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp_698.pdf https://wallstreetonparade.com/2019/04/steve-eisman-and-frontpoint-were-sho… https://www.amazon.com/Collusion-Central-Bankers-Rigged-World/dp/1568585624/ This evening, the PBS program, Frontline, will do something that corporate broadcast media has failed to do since the financial crash of 2008. Frontline will air the results of its year-long investigation of the most powerful financial institution in the world – the central bank of the United States – known as the Federal Reserve, or simply “the Fed.” The Fed’s radical makeover of itself began in December of 2007 when the Fed decided, on its own, that it had the authority to secretly pump out trillions of dollars in cumulative loans to prop up the mega banks on Wall Street, as well as to the foreign banks that were on the other side of Wall Street’s hundreds of trillions of dollars in derivative trades. The Fed secretly ran that program through at least July of 2010 according to the eventual audit that was conducted by the Government Accountability Office. (That audit only came about because Senator Bernie Sanders attached an amendment to the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010.) The Fed’s latest massive bailout operation began on September 17, 2019, months before there was a case of COVID-19 anywhere in the world. The full scope of this operation and other bailout programs remain a dark secret at the Fed, casting a pall over investors’ confidence in the transparency and stability of the U.S. financial system. James Jacoby, Writer, Producer and Correspondent, “The Power of the Fed.” Frontline writers and producers James Jacoby and Anya Bourg, who are the force behind tonight’s Frontline documentary, The Power of the Fed, will now become part of a rarefied group of individuals who have mustered the determination to cut through the Fed’s insidiously cultivated armor of Fed-speak and its preposterous structure that allows it to create trillions of dollars of money electronically out of thin air for bailouts, with only feigned oversight by Congress. We have not yet seen the Frontline program but we have high hopes given the past work of Frontline. (See here and here.) The Frontline team has the opportunity tonight to significantly build on the herculean work of two other journalists who spent years investigating the Fed and advancing Americans’ understanding of its kleptocratic nature: Mark Pittman and Nomi Prins. Mark Pittman was the Bloomberg News reporter responsible for the Bloomberg lawsuit against the Federal Reserve during the 2008 financial crash. Pittman had asked the Federal Reserve Board, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in April and May of 2008, for details of four lending programs, including the borrowers’ names and the amounts borrowed. The programs were the Discount Window, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, and the Term Auction Facility. When the Fed brazenly stonewalled Pittman, Bloomberg News filed the lawsuit on his behalf. On November 10, 2008 Pittman and his colleagues, Bob Ivry and Alison Fitzgerald, wrote an article headlined “Fed Defies Transparency Aim in Refusal to Disclose.” The article reports as follows: “The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. “Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn’t require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.” Pittman shared in a Gerald Loeb award for Bloomberg’s five-part series, “Wall Street’s Faustian Bargain,” which described how a group of Wall Street bankers had created the subprime doomsday machine over Chinese food. Many believed Pittman’s investigations of the Fed put him in line for a Pulitzer. But just a week before the secretive Fed Chair Ben Bernanke was scheduled to sit for his Senate Confirmation hearing for another term at the helm of the Fed, Pittman died of a heart attack at age 52 on November 25, 2009. At the time of Pittman’s death, the Fed was still refusing to release the details of its trillions of dollars in secret loans, despite losing its court battle at the District Court. The Second Circuit appellate court decision, also ruling against the Fed, would not come until March 19, 2010, four months after Pittman’s death. But even after the appellate decision went against it, the Fed refused to release the data. First the Fed asked for a rehearing by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. When that was rejected, a Wall Street consortium of banks, that were the actual recipients of the trillions of dollars in secret loans, appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. That appeal failed as well and the Fed was forced to finally release the astonishing sums it had showered on global banks with zero awareness by any elected member of the George W. Bush administration or any elected member of Congress. When all of the Fed’s bailout programs were tallied up, the tab came to a staggering, cumulative $29 trillion, as meticulously analyzed by the Levy Economics Institute. The Fed had kept the American people completely in the dark as it sluiced these trillions to Wall Street trading houses, foreign banks, the insolvent bank, Citigroup, even hedge funds that were shorting (betting against) the market. Today, the Fed is still stonewalling the public and refusing to release the names of the recipients of some of its emergency bailout programs and its $9 trillion repo loan program that began on September 17, 2019. We reached out to Mark Pittman’s mother, Donna Pittman-Nealey, for her thoughts on her son’s work to bring transparency to the Fed. She told us this: “I can only say he was a pioneer in every way throughout his life. He was never afraid to tackle any problem when he felt he needed an answer. “I am so proud of all he did. So brave a person, smart, and kind. He was so loved. We miss him.” Nomi Prins has also done an extraordinary public service in bringing sunlight to areas that the Fed would much rather keep in the shadows. Prins authored the 2018 book, Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World. Prins writes that “Eight years after the [2008] crisis began, the Big Six US banks – JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley – collectively held 43 percent more deposits, 84 percent more assets, and triple the amount of cash they held before. The Fed has allowed the biggest banks on Wall Street to essentially double the risk that devastated the system in 2008.” Prins explains in the book that what the U.S. Fed and other major central banks like the Bank of Japan and European Central Bank are doing is “conjuring” money. The money has been conjured or fabricated, writes Prins, because the Fed and other central banks are allowed to electronically create money at the push of a button. The Fed is so captured as a regulator of the banks that Prins says the Fed imposed no obligations on them in exchange for its bailouts. Prins writes that the banks that “inhaled this cheap money were not required to increase their lending to the Main Street economy as a condition of the availability of that money….” For its part in creating the most unstable financial structure in U.S. history, the Fed is absolutely shameless. Prins writes that “The Fed absolved itself of all responsibility for financial stability in the big bank landscape in June 2017 when it allowed thirty-four of the largest Wall Street banks, including the Big Six, to pass its stress tests. In turn, the banks took this opportunity to buy more of their own shares, elevating their stock prices rather than expanding their loan services for small businesses and Main Street customers.” This maneuver by the Fed resulted in announcements that Wall Street banks planned “to buy back $92.8 billion of their own stock as a direct response to the Fed’s blessing,” notes Prins, effectively meaning that the Fed was “greenlighting legal manipulation of the stock market.” Indeed, says Prins, “The Dow soared.” The Fed and those same banks are back to the exact tricks again today. Prins’ policy recommendations for removing the stranglehold that the Fed has on America is to “implement actual oversight of the conjurers and dedicate effective channels through which to question and curtail their authority and actions.” Let’s hope that the questioning of the unbridled powers of the Fed begins in earnest with tonight’s Frontline documentary.

1 1