News from the Network, Vol. 2, No. 15

Naturally, the news that banks have booked record profits in the first quarter has buoyed up the stock market. It will probably take a few weeks for people to begin realizing that, just as the stock market (the secondary market for debt and equity) doesn't really gauge the actual economic health of the country, banks and other financial institutions (dealing in pieces of paper that may or may not be backed by hard assets) don't tell us how well individuals and families are doing financially. They are the ones doing well, not ordinary people, especially those who are still without jobs or ownership of capital to generate a living income.

For that reason, it's singularly appropriate that there hasn't been very much going on except preparing for the rally outside the Federal Reserve.

• Obviously, then, the main news this week is a reminder that the annual peaceful rally at the Federal Reserve building in Washington, DC, will take place on Wednesday, April 15, 2009, from noon to 1:30 PM, rain or shine, snow or sleet, sun, moon, or stars. We probably won't stick around too long in the event of a tornado, but we'll be there otherwise.

• Most of the activity this week has involved meetings and preparation for the rally at the Federal Reserve, which hasn't left much time for anything else. The important message, of course, is "Democratize the Fed." This doesn't just mean opening up democratic access to the means of acquiring and possessing a reasonable stake of income-generating assets (in other words, capital credit). Just as important, it also means spreading out ownership of the Federal Reserve itself among every citizen and legal resident of the United States and all territories served by America's central banking system. This is the only just — and effective — method of building accountability into the system and making it difficult-to-impossible for the federal government once again to hijack the Federal Reserve to avoid being accountable to the taxpayers for what the federal government spends.

• Specifically, the rally will help spread the word about how the Federal Reserve, without taxpayer money or adding to Federal debt, could help monetize the building of a "green growth" economy, which would eliminate U.S. dependency on imported oil and create a nation of capital owners by lifting artificial barriers to more equal future ownership opportunities.

• The Capital Homesteading effort will start in one of the most poverty-impacted areas in the U.S., the Metro East Citizens Land Cooperative Project in East St. Louis and its 14 neighboring Metro East (IL) Riverfront Communities. This project will introduce a comprehensive plan for the commercialization of advanced waste-to-energy technologies and the redevelopment of land and real estate. The project will result in 2,100 new jobs and the direct ownership of land and new energy systems by every local citizen as a shareholder in a for-profit Community Investment Corporation/Citizens Land Cooperative.

• There is also a plan to save the American automobile industry. The American Auto Worker Ownership Committee, consisting of active and retired members of the United Auto Workers, along with management, suppliers, dealers, and vested stakeholder, will offer their solution to the crisis in one of America's basic industries. The AAWOC's proposal calls for the reorganization and financing of the Big Three Auto Companies as 100% worker-owned entities through a leveraged Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) structure. It also proposes a new contract that would transform the United Auto Workers from its outmoded, conflict-based model of labor unionism to a more collaborative, productive and market-oriented "ownership union."

• As of this morning, we have had visitors from 43 different countries and 45 states and provinces in the United States and Canada to this blog over the past two months. Most visitors are from the United States, with Canada, Finland, the UK, and the Philippines. The most popular posting is still the one on Abraham Lincoln and the Homestead Act, although (probably because of the demonstration at the Federal Reserve in Washington, DC on Wednesday, April 15, 2009 — next week) the next three most popular are on the need to reform the central bank of the United States. The rest of the top ten deal with the increasingly obvious flaws in Keynesian economics.

Those are the happenings for this week, at least that we know about. If you have an accomplishment that you think should be listed, send us a note about it at mgreaney [at] cesj [dot] org, and we'll see that it gets into the next "issue." If you have a short (250-400 word) comment on a specific posting, please enter your comments in the blog — do not send them to us to post for you. All comments are moderated anyway, so we'll see it before it goes up.