Reality Blog – by Clint Richardson
In case you haven’t heard, municipal bankruptcy is now all the rage. When smaller municipal corporations (only corporations can declare bankruptcy) had little resistance as test cases for these outrageous claims of fraudulent bankruptcy and default, the larger municipalities gained the confidence that the financially illiterate cesspool of people as citizens don’t know there heads from a hole in the wall when it comes to the financial reporting apparatus of government. The people were determined to be sufficiently ignorant of even the basic checking account balance of the general fund in their local governments and school districts, let alone the massive collective government investment scam robbing them of the entirety of their wealth, making it reasonable to assume that these municipal corporation’s financial position would likely never be challenged by that clueless mass of the indentured. And so the latest trend of conspiracy and fraud against those debt-slaves continues… this time in the not so great City of Detroit.
Considering its checkered past; riddled with the disappearance of industry to U.S. funded infrastructure economies like Mexico and China, it would seem to the average citizen that Detroit should have done this bankruptcy thing long ago. Of course, the fact that it did not declare its bankruptcy at all was because this municipal corporation has never been bankrupt, and certainly is not anywhere near being able to claim that legitimate legal declaration today.
And yet here it is, making that very declaration…
This is very important because the legal statement of bankruptcy means nothing as a mere “declaration” until a government court makes that determination to cause it to be official. Thus, the obvious conspiracy of a government appealing to government to get government permission to default on its debt should not be lost on the reader; though in general this governance of government by government itself seems perfectly normal to most people – a regulatory body operating in a completely unregulated fashion as organized crime. Inherently, of course, this self-governance and self-regulation by government and its BAR judicial is nothing if not a breeding ground for the worst kind of corruption and greed at the expense of the governed. For the people in their state of fear, entertainment, and confusion are certainly not regulating those regulators…
And a corporate judge of the International BAR Association will decide, not the people being defaulted upon.
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ALIPAC printed the following “facts” facts about Detroit that on the surface are absolutely mind-blowing…
1 – Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and in 1960 Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation.
2 – Over the past 60 years, the population of Detroit has fallen by 63 percent.
3 – At this point, approximately 40 percent of all the streetlights in the city don’t work.
4 – Some ambulances in the city of Detroit have been used for so long that they havemore than 250,000 miles on them.
5 – 210 of the 317 public parks in the city of Detroit have been permanently closed down.
6 – According to the New York Times, there are now approximately 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit.
7 – Approximately one-third of Detroit’s 140 square miles is either vacant or derelict.
8 – Less than half of the residents of Detroit over the age of 16 are working at this point.
9 – If you can believe it, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
10 – According to one very shocking report, 47 percent of the residents of Detroit are functionally illiterate.
11 – Today, police solve less than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed in Detroit.
12 – Ten years ago, there were approximately 5,000 police officers in the city of Detroit. Today, there are only about 2,500 and another 100 are scheduled to be eliminated from the force soon.
13 – Due to budget cutbacks, most police stations in Detroit are now closed to the publicfor 16 hours a day.
14 – The murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than it is in New York City.
15 – Crime has gotten so bad in Detroit that even the police are telling people to “enter Detroit at your own risk“.
16 – Right now, the city of Detroit is facing $20 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities. That breaks down to more than $25,000 per resident… As Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr noted last week, it took a very long time for Detroit to get into this condition…
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Of course, this article like all others doesn’t mention the legal crime operating behind these horrific scenes and reported in the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) – what I have nicknamed the “Achilles Heel” of government. While these facts and figures are certainly important as to the physical state of Detroit, the absence of public information on the actual financial state of that fictional municipal corporation government called “City of Detroit” is never discussed due to the overwhelming lack of exposure and coverage by every news outlet in America about the financial statements required by Federal law for every government entity and corporation in the United States. The greatest open secret in fascist history remains open and secret. In short, these municipalities across the nation in every State have exacted, extorted, and excavated all of the wealth of the people for its organized and collective investment schemes that, not ironically, are only disclosed in the CAFR of government. And collectively the over 230,000 local and state government entities across the nation have been legally required to funnel taxpayer money into investment funds that ultimately never benefit these local or state governments or their people. Instead, the invest in “emerging markets” in countries like Mexico and China – which soon will become the largest economy in the world thanks to the ignorance of the very citizens of the United States that have no idea this has been happening for over 70 years.
One would in general look at the above factoids about Detroit and justifiably assume that the decaying state of that City is a direct reflection of the similar financial state of the government corporation that controls that area. This, however, is patently false – a fallacy built up through media and political misrepresentation.
The true culprit of that misrepresentation is in the form of the hand selected “budget report” that is delivered to the people publicly each year. The people are never told that this “budget” is actually not the original and main financial statement that is created by governments and audited by independent accounting firms. You see, the budget report is nothing but an intentionally dumbed-down version of the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), which is filed each year as a requirement of the Federal and State legal codes.
What does this mean?
It means that the budget is merely a reflection of what I call the “creative accounting”that is applied to the audited CAFR report so as to make the budget report appear to be in a state of decay, debt, default, and loss. While the CAFR may show assets of millions or billions in cash and investments, the budget report will be creatively manipulated by this special creative accounting process to create an illusionist “balance sheet” that somehow, incredibly, and magically turns an asset into a liability.
Detroit is of course no exception to this rule. For the decaying state of this city has very little to do with the financial state of this municipal corporation. But the fallacy remains that as the city decays so too does the financial state of its government.
Here is a link to the City of Detroit’s 2012 CAFR:
**Note that this website takes you to the Detroit government (.gov) website.
While I will not go into the full detail of how this corrupt Municipal Corporation of organized crime has gotten to this point, I will just point out the most important factor in determining whether or not this corporation is actually bankrupt – a factor that I guarantee will be ignored by the government court and bankruptcy judge in this case if the people do not finally rise up and demand that Detroit pay its debt today instead of defaulting on it. That factoid is the promotion of its future debt payments as a current liability effecting today’s balance sheet. The fact is that 99% of the entire structure of municipalities across the nation could be out of debt tomorrow and still have money and investments to spare (be in the black) if it weren’t for the fact that governments enjoy, promote, and profit from the interest (usury) created by debt. In other words, instead of using the money it holds today for services in its investment funds, a government will create a municipal bond and pay that loan off over 20-50 years at interest. Sometimes it is other governments across the nation that are funding those bonds, sometimes banks, and sometimes Public Private Partnerships (PPP) are created in agreement for the loan by private or publicly traded corporations. Ironically, that money that government could have used in lieu of that loan to pay for that service is often invested in such things as corporate bonds – loans to governments, banks, and private and publicly traded corporations. And these bonds are bundled and sold as securities on the bond markets as commodities – debt contracts worth a future value. And the investment scam continues while televisions pump digital airwaves of Stars dancing and Idols singing.
On page 41 of this CAFR we see the illusion blatantly spelled out for us in the basic “Statement of Net Assets”. Of course, this is not the full disclosure of investment fund totals for the City because of other creative accounting within the CAFR designed to minimize those balances shown on this chart, but it shows the scam very well in its full corrupt glory.
The City claims to have over $10.6 billion in liabilities, which it then “balances” against about $10.3 billion in assets. This leaves a “balance” of assets that gets shown to the people of a negative $3oo million dollars.
Just one problem though…
You see, most people would simply consider this balance as the cash balance of the government, having no clue about the investment scam their government has participated in for decades that funnels taxpayer monies out of the taxpayer base and into governments investment funds.
And so for the fiscal year 2012-2013 ending in the month of June last year, the actual current liabilities (due within one year) – which represent debt payments for that fiscal year that would be paid in that fiscal year – only amount to about $309 million.
This means that the other $9.1 billion dollars listed here as “due after one year” is allfuture debt payments that will basically amount to somewhere around a $300-400 million dollar amortization schedule for the next fiscal year and so on. In other words, for the 2013-2014 fiscal year, Detroit’s actual “current liabilities” are only $300-400 million dollars. The rest of that $9.1 billion still is not due until future payments are made in 5, 10, 20, and up to 50 years in the future!!!
And yet those payments and future debts are somehow effecting the current balance of today?
Can you say creative accounting?
Can you say FRAUD?
The trick here is that, as with all municipalities across the nation, by law these governments are able to and encouraged to not include future assets in the form or fees and taxes that will be collected in those future years that will certainly pay for those future debt payments. So here we see that government is claiming a future liability as a current liability, and yet conveniently disregarding the projected future assets it will receive in the future as current assets to balance the future liabilities.
This “creative accounting” trick is used by all governments – BECAUSE IT IS THE RECOMMENDED STANDARD OF PRACTICE BY GOVERNMENT TO FUND THE COLLECTIVE ORGANIZED INVESTMENT SCAM ACROSS THE UNITED STATES!!!
So what is the true financial position of the government of Detroit?
It can pay off, if it chooses to, all of its future debt today with its current assets.
Of course, this would mean that the interest charges on that future debt and bonds would not be accrued in the future and therefore would not be paid out, bringing the actual total liabilities due today (without future interest charges attached) significantly down it total, since by paying off that future debt today no interest would be charged for anywhere from the next 10-50 years.
For an in depth explanation of this creative accounting trick and how you can identify it on your own municipal CAFR, see my research here:http://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/unmasking-the-cafr-scam-in-every-city-usa/
And check this out to see where your tax dollars really go:http://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/cafr-school-how-corporations-are-funded-by-taxpayers/
And so here we stand, another high profile municipality pretending to bite the dust while hiding its real wealth under false accounting principles that are allowed at the very top level of the federal government. Detroit City will act upon the purpose of its incorporation by utilizing the “limited liability” function of that privilege – a privilege one only granted to honorable men who sought to improve and strengthen all men, not just themselves. And this protection of government called incorporation now protects crime instead of the people who are harmed by that crime. For all of government is naught but a limited liability corporation collectively organized in harming the people.
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At this point it has been reported that the Detroit government is tearing down up to 350 abandoned homes and buildings per day in that city. Its plan is to create a “model” Agenda 21 city; a green city; one that is built towards the sky with compartmentalized condo housing instead of sprawling out from its center where land may be enjoyed by single family dwellings. This re-imagining of city life will become a beacon of the future of “smart growth” and the “smart grid”, matching lifestyle and technology to create the perfect Orwellian fit for those who love to love their biometric servitude and love to be on camera. it will be a model city built on retracting individual rights in lieu of the collective good of the citizenry as is laid out in the U.N.’s Declaration of Human Rights that has all but usurped the constitution of the United States – this is the future of Detroit Rock City and likely a city near you…
The economic fallacy that growth equals a good economy ultimately and ironically requires the destruction and pestilence we see in Detroit. And so, in order to grow the new city, the old one must be destroyed to make way for the ever-growing economy. It is in the best interests of the government corporation and its investment scheme for this to happen. And even more frightening to contemplate is that bridges, roads, tunnels, buildings, sewers, water, electrical, and other infrastructure is more profitable in decay for that investment scam than it is as a well-maintained infrastructure. Destruction and decay requires investment and promotes growth. This is the model of government and its “economy”.
Detroit is not bankrupt. It has created the illusion of bankruptcy by such common financial trickery as pension pre-funding – where future debt payments must be paid in advance so that government can invest that taxpayer money instead of using it to fix up the broken City. Congress used this same trick to make it appear that the Federal Post Office is broke, while in really it just created legislation that forced the post office to borrow money from government and corporate sources to pre-fund the Federal Pension funds instead of paying the normal contributions over time. In other words, government is forcing itself to pay future liabilities today – which just happens to have the good-for-government and bad-for-the-people side effect of creating the unnecessary illusion that bankruptcy is needed. And so government is now the largest defaulting entity in history. And the people blindly support what they don’t understand, allowing that fraudulent government machine to place the responsibility for its actions upon the backs of those people in the form of sheer usurious debt, while laughing all the way to the bank.
Imagine such greed and opportunity that would make men in the public trust force the bankruptcy of a city just because they don’t want to wait to receive their pension payments by taxpayers in the future. While this would seem counter-intuitive (destroying a city to support city employee pensions), the truth is that this is just business as usual. For government is not in the business of helping people. It is a financial mega-corporation with branches in every square mile of the United States with investments in the entire world economy.
How many times do I have to say it…?
Government is nothing but the organization of crime. For a government that creates, adjudicates, enforces, and exempts itself from its own laws is thus lawless – a mafia above its own prescribed laws. When the law is lawless, there is no law.
–Clint Richardson (realitybloger.wordpress.com)
–Saturday, July 20th, 2013
http://realitybloger.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/detroit-the-latest-bankruptcy-lie/
At least vultures wait until the body is dead.
The author’s argument presumes that the money actually exists, but he’s ignoring the arithmetic of fractional reserve banking, and the financial black hole caused by the derivatives bubble. There is no money anywhere, because only 10% of it ever existed in the first place, and that’s been stolen and spent long ago.
Detroit is just as bankrupt as everyone else, but everyone else won’t know it until they’re scrounging for crumbs. Right now they’re just cheaper to feed than a big city, so the crumbs are easy to find.