What’s Happening To ‘Your’ Money?-March 2023
The laundering cycles continue...
What’s happening to ‘your’ money?
Although death and taxes seem a certainty, and there are the inevitable funeral expenses to consider—and in the most timeworn of outlooks, mortgage brokers and banks are also in line for their cut of one’s earned wages, most of us have no idea where the money goes. As far as funeral expenses go—the profit margins seem unnecessarily disproportionate to the services rendered. Basically, whether the physical body returns to the Earth to be recycled as a tree or plant food, or as dust in the wind—why do we spend thousands of dollars on all the accouterments? Organizing a wake seems a better use of one’s money, and many ministers or rabbis might be happy to make an appearance as long as travel expenses are covered.
While we are still above ground, however, the Federal Government’s taxes are the detail that many are encumbered with, especially in times of inflationary food and fuel bills. For the average worker, there’s always more month than money; and what is the government doing with all our money anyhow?
Most adults should know by now that the founding fathers didn’t envision an IRS division to replicate what they had left behind in England. The feudal program from 500 years ago seems to have followed us through the ages, albeit in disguise. We might’ve offered the King a daughter or two, and provided a few chickens and goats to pay for protection from the invading hordes, and now we have Homeland Security and defense contractors who play the King’s middlemen. What’s the difference in the end?
BANK NOTE$ of INTEREST:
• Brian Moynihan, the Chairman of Bank of America told CNN: “We have to be prepared for [a US sovereign debt default]”
• BOA is one of the top shareholders of the Federal Reserve Board and its’ US Corporation subsidiary so, he has inside knowledge.—Robert Barnes: Viva Frei
What’s it cost to keep the IRS/FED afloat?
YELLEN’S MONEY, aka “She’s Preaching to the Choir”
Yellen has been serving as the 78th United States secretary of the treasury since January 26, 2021. She’s paid an estimated annual salary of $219,200.
First, we might consider that Janet Yellen is a paid lackey that serves the interests of the FED. And in tandem with the FED, the IRS has a considerable role to play in terms of collections and enforcement of a program invented at the beginning of the twentieth century. The game expands from there, and a most generous amount of the citizen tax pool goes to Defense. As Ron Paul pointed out over the last twenty years—the Federal Reserve Board has somehow evaded audits, thus we truly don’t know how money is allocated to its own maintenance. As for the IRS?… “CBO(Congressional Budget Office) estimates that portions of the Administration’s proposal to increase funding for the IRS by $80 billion over the 2022–2031 period would increase revenues by approximately $200 billion over those 10 years.”
Tax collection costs the taxpayers as well. We get billed in order to pay the bill!
Update on a Renewed IRS clampdown—
Epoch Times Reports:
“The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) this week issued a notice to “gig economy” service workers and those who receive a foreign source of income that they have to report potential tax obligations on income.
An IRS release issued Mar. 1 says that taxpayers have to report income from the gig economy on their tax returns, “even if the income is from part-time, temporary, or side work; paid in any form, including cash, property, goods or digital assets; not reported on an information return form like a Form 1099-K, 1099-MISC, W-2, or other income statement.”
“The gig economy is defined as an activity where people earn income from providing on-demand goods, services, or work—and it’s often via an online platform such as an app or a website like Instacart, Lyft, DoorDash, or Uber.”
Behave yourself obedient taxpaying citizens!…and don’t think for a minute that your taxes are misspent.
An update on Yellen’s schmoozing—Feb. 27th,2023—NPR reports:
KYIV, Ukraine — “U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made a surprise visit to Ukraine Monday, in which she reaffirmed America's support for the country and announced $1.25 billion in economic aid for things like schools and hospitals.
The money is the first part of a new $9.9 billion package of civilian aid for Ukraine as its war with Russia enters a second year.”
THE PERKS
In addition to Yellen’s salary, there are perks to consider, and this is a big part of the political celebrity entertainment sideshow.
“Yellen is reported to have made over $7 million from her public appearances, speaking to bankers such as Goldman Sachs and Barclays. This is a modest sum compared to the billions Zelensky has drummed up through his own public relations efforts, whose success has still not seen him with sufficient spending money to buy a suit.”
“Yellen is the former head of the Federal Reserve, who was initially billed as a technocrat and a safe pair of hands. Her power and prestige have been seriously reduced, however, by the subordination of any economic wisdom to the requirements of ideological wordplay. Her description of inflation as “transitory” and the consequent redefinition of “recession” to avoid reality demonstrates the meaning of the safety of these hands.”
“She is adept at handling the facts in a manner pleasing to the regime and its media image, and is willing to dissemble to do so. The following summary of her fall from grace by regional economics research fellow EJ Antoni underlines her qualifications for the sensitive matter of Ukrainian oversight”:
“Sadly, she is living proof that when financial aptitude is made subservient to ideology, even the talented fall from grace, and no amount of Orwellian word games can offer redemption.”
The scope of the MIC
Then there are the subsidiary agencies that are aligned with the defense budget to consider— even if we forget to factor these agencies into the ‘tax and spend’ equation. Consider the budgets of Homeland Security, TSA, or any of the private corporations that sell surveillance systems to ‘our’ government. We pay for our ‘protection’—and we pay for the surveillance that purportedly makes us all feel safer—even when we are actually engaged in spying on ourselves in the end. Also, in light of details that have emerged re the DoD managing the recent CV-19 “pandemic”—we can factor in portions of the pie puzzle such as Health Insurance, Science and Medical Research, Economic Security, and Public Safety. There was a reason why President Eisenhower labeled the vast array of institutions, corporations, and agencies under one handy umbrella, the “Military Industrial Corporate Complex.”
Tracking our assets in the field—Military expenses
ABOVE: Boys with very expensive toys, and a very profitable contract-bid program. The ‘Top-Secret’ designation eliminates the taxpayer’s prying eyes and oversight. Citizens are the last to find out where and how their taxes were spent. The U.S. Dept. of Defense budget for 2023 is an estimated $816 Billion dollars. The defense budget was (as usual) a bipartisan decision. Both sides— the Republicans and Democrats— are loyal to the defense contractors in the end. As long as our Military officers remember that they swore an oath to uphold the tenets of the U.S. Constitution, I suppose we may sleep peacefully at night.
THE US NAVY BUDGET EXAMINED:
The key term to consider is “sustainment.”
“The need for this kind of effort was highlighted in the most recent long-range shipbuilding plan, which projects from Fiscal Year 2022 out through 2051.
The previous long-range plan – which outlines FY 2020 through 2049 – showed the fleet hitting 355 ships at the end of the plan and costing $55.5 billion a year to sustain in manpower, operations and ship maintenance costs. This only looks at the ships, not the aircraft or other activities that support them.
In the FY 2022 plan, the fleet reaches 405 battle force ships by the end of the plan but costs nearly $130 billion a year – 50 more ships but well over double the price tag.
When the plan was first released, a senior Navy official said the new model amounted to a 2.1 percent increase for inflation plus a 2 percent increase for real growth in the costs for manning, operations and maintenance.
Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez told USNI News this week that the Navy had previously followed the Pentagon’s model of just increasing sustainment costs to rise with the rate of inflation, but the FY 2022 plan used a different model to project costs.” —source: USNI News
Interestingly, when it comes to scrapping an aircraft carrier, the Navy only pays the demolition outfit $.01.
Obviously, there’s some type of interesting profit scheme involved where the “scrap” is sold to a government’s naval interests somewhere on planet Earth. I wonder how a person could get a broker fee for a deal like this—that is to say after the scrap is sold off to the highest bidder?
USS KITTYHAWK (also retired and scrapped for a penny)
The USS Kittyhawk was built for $264 million in 1961 ($2.5 billion dollars in 2021)
What’s it cost to keep a battleship or aircraft carrier afloat?
It’s not so easy getting the current 2023 budgetary stats. We can review older charts, however, to get a ballpark estimate on what it costs to keep one aircraft carrier in service. This runs in the range of $142 Million dollars in the fiscal year of 1996. As for 2022?…[Shhhh—it’s a whole lotta dough-especially when considering inflation.]
AIRCRAFT SUSTAINMENT COSTS (2018):
The F-35 Total Operating & Support Costs
‘Fuel costs’ for the F-16:
“The F-16 cruises at 480 knots, which is 552.4 miles an hour. At this speed, it gets 0.7 miles per gallon, which works out to $2.73 a mile. That's just over $1500 an hour (Not giving a precise answer here because the exact cost would vary with weapons load, air density, and that day's fuel price…”)
“The F-35's acquisition price tag is $400 billion, making it the most expensive Pentagon program ever. The current unit price of an F-35A is now $89.2 million and Lockheed predicts this price will fall to $80 million by 2020. The F-35B variant is $115.5 million and the F-35C is $107.7 million. But as production ramps up, the unit price will drop further.”
And after acquisition, the estimate for operating and maintaining the total fleet over the course of its service life is a whopping $1.45 trillion. The F-35A variant costs $44,000 per hour to fly vs. $19,000 per hour for the legacy F-16 fighter, according to Air Force data cited by the Washington Post.”—source:Investors.com/research
WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ‘THEIR’ MONEY?…macro-finance, the global watch
“Credit Suisse — which in the last month alone has reported customers withdrew $120 billion — is now informing ultra-high-net-worth individuals of yet another disaster, On the Money has learned.”
“The Swiss bank is telling some top clients — customers who keep $50 million or more in the bank — that sensitive personal information including social security identification, employment information, and contact details has been compromised.” https://nypost.com/2023/03/02/credit-suisse-breach-spills-info-of-high-net-worth-clients/
THE GLOBAL BANK COLLAPSE IS NOW IN FREE FALL…
“Credit Suisse is indeed implicated in international criminal fraud, in this case, the money laundry in Geneva of The Europe Union paying bribery to all of The Queen’s Prime Ministers to commit high treason. We have all the evidence. This is why they keep firing prime ministers in London. The Queen and Her Majesty’s husband were both murdered because of this among so many.”
“I know from very credible sources that Bank of America, Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase are insolvent and have bankruptcy proceedings active. They are ‘sealed’ from the public’s view,’ the Mossad source adds.”
“Despite the attempt to cover this up, bits and pieces are leaking. Chinese real estate developers have stopped about USD 53.6 Billion in loans to Western banks, Blackstone defaulted $580 million on a Manhattan building (40% vacancy); the second default on Nordic REIT (46% vacancy) totaling $2.1 Billion…PIMCO defaulted on $1.7 Billion and Brookfield defaulted on 2 Los Angeles bldgs with $783 million in mortgages.”—B.Fulford, March 6th, 2023
*Sleuthing hobbyists take note!
The Weird Trick That Lets Amateurs Detect Warships at Sea
“A European satellite designed to collect Earth sciences data and distribute it freely to people around the world has the unintended consequence of detecting military radars. Whoops.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Sentinel-1 satellite uses a synthetic aperture radar designed to image Earth’s surface, but it’s also canceled out by other radars operating on similar frequencies—including those on warships at sea.”—https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-weird-trick-that-lets-amateurs-detect-warships-at-sea
Sources:
Increasing the operating budget for the I.R.S.—https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444
https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/where-are-all-those-billions-of-dollars-sent-to-ukraine-really-going/
https://news.usni.org/2021/01/28/navy-taking-hard-look-at-sustainment-costs-as-new-projection-doubles-expected-long-term-bill
https://news.usni.org/2014/12/22/navy-pays-texas-ship-breaker-penny-dismantle-carrier-ranger
https://www.historyonthenet.com/medieval-life
https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57444
https://www.investors.com/research/f35-fighter/
irreverent and inconvenient truths—Brother Nathanael: