'The Secret of Oz' exposes devious financial wizards

Documentary reveals government-corporate conspiracy of epic proportions

Posted: November 16, 2009
8:45 pm Eastern
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

When filmmaker Bill Still reads the daily economic news, he has to laugh incredulously.

Take the recent news that JPMorgan Chase would be doing its patriotic duty to provide jobs and credit for struggling Americans – hiring 1,200 new mortgage
loan officers.

"Morgan is just trying to reinflate the real-estate bubble to try to get out of the giant crater of bad debt it is already in," says the director of the award-winning documentary "The Secret of Oz" that is shaking up the established economic paradigms. "Of course JPMorgan is willing to hand out mortgage loans liberally. It has nothing to lose. The government – is backing it."

According to the latest numbers from the Treasury Department, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs are holding the bag on 60 percent of the world’s derivatives – an astonishing $120 trillion between them, Still reports.

But instead of being held responsible for the collapse of the world economy, they were rewarded during the debacle by being allowed to absorb their primary competitors.

According to former Labor Secretary Robert Reich of the University of California: "Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan really have emerged as the winners, as the last of the survivors."

JPMorgan was the biggest winner in the government bailouts, after receiving a $25 billion loan, it gobbled up Bear Stearns' assets for about two cents on the dollar and then the assets of Washington Mutual – the nation's largest failed bank – for less than a penny on the dollar. Goldman Sachs received approximately $50 billion, but both firms have now repaid the government.

Get Bill Still's "The Secrets of Oz: Solutions for a Broken Economy"

In the last three months, both Morgan and Goldman have reported record corporate profits that are averaging above $1 billion a month each.

"Now, we, the taxpayers, will be insuring these new mortgages as Morgan and Goldman try to dig themselves out of their toxic derivatives hole," said Still. "They can’t lose because Congress is going to back them. They are privatizing the profits and socializing the losses. Any money they gain from those who actually pay their mortgages, they pocket as profit, but they pass on the bad loans to the government and we, the people, end up paying for them in increased taxes. They can't get any more bankrupt than they are now."

"The Secret of Oz" trailer - How to Fix the 2010 Depression - directed by Bill Still

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cq9yEVc ... r_embedded

According to Treasury figures at the end of June, Morgan held a staggering $80 trillion in derivative exposure, 50 times more than its $1.6 trillion in assets. Goldman Sachs is in an even more precarious condition. It holds $40 trillion in derivatives backed by assets of only $120 billion – a leverage of 333-to-1.

"To put this into perspective," said Still, "The Gross Domestic Product of the United States is a mere $14 trillion. Even the world GDP is only $65 trillion, and the best estimate of the worth of everything in the world is only $200 trillion. That's how big these numbers are."

"This is not incentive-driven capitalism! That's the problem," said Still. "It's a hybrid somewhere between socialism and plutocracy. Big money controls the government so that it no longer does the will of the people, it gives these huge financial monopolies whatever they want. People sense it, they just can’t put their finger on where the center of the problem is."

Mega-investor Wayne Rogers is certainly not shy about identifying the problem. On "Cashing In" on the Fox News Channel Saturday, he put it this way: "Goldman Sachs is a conspiracy with the government. They are a fascist organization. They are supplying the guy who is the secretary of the Treasury, then he goes back to Goldman Sachs. Meantime he owns 800,000 shares of Goldman Sachs and Goldman Sachs gets bailed out by the government. The whole thing is outrageous. Let them go down. Let them go through the bankruptcy court. That's what the law is for."

"At the root of all this is government debt," said Still. "The government is going to need more loans next year on an unprecedented scale. In the coming year, the federal government will spend $4 trillion, but it will have to borrow half of that from big banks, both here and abroad. It creates a vicious cycle of government debt dependency. Government just can't say no to them – or so officials think."

This was Thomas Jefferson's main complaint about the U.S. Constitution as well: "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution ... taking from the federal government the power of borrowing."

So what can be done with the national debt rocketing above $12 trillion?

"You can't just reduce the national debt," explains Still. "You have to change the system and eliminate it entirely. We have to eliminate the ability of the government to borrow our money into existence. There are ways to do this. 'The Secret of Oz' shows that we've done it before in American history; and we can do it again. The federal government has to be put on a pay-as-you-go basis."

In "The Secret of Oz," Still, the filmmaker behind the mega-successful "The Money Masters," warns the U.S. is a deep Depression – unless lawmakers address the root of the problem: mounting interest payments on the national debt.

The documentary asks the question: Could the solution to America's economic troubles be encoded in the pages of L. Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"?

It is well-known in economics academia that "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" – written by Baum in 1900 – is loaded with powerful symbols of monetary reform which were the core of the populist movement and the 1896 and 1900 presidential bids of Democrat William Jennings Bryan.

The yellow brick road (gold standard), the emerald city of Oz (greenback money), even Dorothy's silver slippers (changed to ruby slippers for the movie version) were symbols of the beliefs of Baum and Bryan that adding silver coinage to gold would provide much needed money to a Depression-strapped, 1890s America.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=116183