Best Evidence Videos

by John Titus

Introduction:

My central concern from day one has been the abuse of legal and monetary power. My earlier videos generally (but not consciously) treat those topics as separate issues, whereas my later work finds the root of both problems in the vastly misplaced monetary power of banks.

The earliest BestEvidence videos focus on the ways in which financial and political leaders, with cover provided by mainstream media, were sacrificing the middle class in order to shower banks and Wall Street with bailouts and other preferential treatment. Ultimately this means that there is no rule of law in the U.S., which is in fact controlled not by U.S. law but by a global cartel of criminal banks:

“Who’s Blowtorching American Jobs?” (Feb. 25, 2015, 8:39) exposes the post-2008 economic recovery story as false and reveals massive deterioration in the labor force participation rate in lockstep with the Federal Reserve’s shoveling of trillions of dollars of newly created money to the familiar list of crony financial institutions.

“Ben Bernanke’s Sovereign Deception” (Mar. 14, 2015, 11:08) proves beyond any doubt that then Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke–lionized by the media though he is–lied to congress about Main Street financial problems in order to get the TARP bailout passed.

“Fed Audit Shocker: They Come from Planet Klepto” (Sept. 15, 2015, 19:49) shows that the Federal Reserve paid over 100 cents on the dollar for mortgage-backed securities that were worth no more than 5 cents, at the same time banks were cutting way back on Main Street lending.

“The Veneer of Justice in a Kingdom of Crime” (Mar. 18, 2016, 45:41) reveals Wall Street’s coup d’etat that took place in the Obama Justice Department, namely, that the DOJ wasn’t even investigating Wall Street banks for criminal fraud, not because there was no fraud, but due to “collateral consequences,” a factor for deciding whether to prosecute corporations set forth in the U.S. Attorneys Manual. The follow-up inquiry then advances to, who decides whether or not collateral consequences suffice to justify non-prosecution? The film uses documents to answer that question unambiguously: in the case of Goldman Sachs and its Abacus and Timberwolf frauds, it was… Goldman Sachs who decided not to prosecute–and it was DOJ Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer who lied about the law on behalf of Goldman, which happens to be his law firm’s client.

“All the Plenary’s Men” (April 28, 2017, 56:41) reveals that when it comes to global banks caught committing crimes in the U.S., the Department of Justice simply ignores U.S. law and enforces immunity provisions supplied by the Bank for International Settlements instead. The upshot is that criminal global banks are the true sovereign power in the U.S.

The remaining videos on BestEvidence are part of a series called Mafiacracy Now, divided into three seasons S1, S2 and S3.

Season one explores why the criminal immunity of banks is simply an expression of their sovereign power, and touches on how that power is rooted in their legal ability to create money out of nothing.

“We Used to Throw Criminals Off” (S1 E1, 13:19). The debut of Mafiacracy Now on BestEvidence on March 11, 2019. Explains why having criminal immunity from legal prosecution is the defining feature of a sovereign power: a party with criminal immunity can replicate (expropriate) any sovereign power, and avoid prosecution by pleading immunity (a power not available to anyone in the U.S., including the president). Briefly retraces the banks’ very public exercise of criminal immunity in 2008-12. Those banks having never relinquished their sovereign power, everything else, including presidential elections, takes on an aura of theater since in reality the ultimate sovereign power lies with the criminally immune banks. Episodes ends with preview of next episode’s introduction of an author whose work speaks to the sovereign power of banks.

“The ‘New’ World Order Criminal Bankers Caused the American Revolution” (S1 E2, 20:42 March 19, 2019). Readings from Alexander Del Mar, the greatest monetary historian of the 19th century (and one of the greatest ever), who documents the rise of the financier class through a series of legal encroachments in England that ultimately provoked her American colony to revolt—successfully. The following history is gleaned from three Del Mar books: A History of Monetary Crimes (1899), History of Monetary Systems (1895), The History of Money in America (1900),

1:38 Introduction to Alexander Del Mar
2:40 East India Co. charter expanded to include money, 1662
3:48 “New” world order formed that same year, 1662
5:40 East India Co. vastly expands monetary charter again, 1666
6:45 1666 changed course monetary history, introduced panics
7:30 Brief history of four panic-free monetary eras before 1666
11:40 Bank of England’s adverse role in the American Colonies
13:20 BofE dishonors its notes 2 years after its 1694 formation
13:45 Bankers use monetary power to steal from people
14:40 Depression in colonies caused by London bankers
15:40 Colonies react by printing paper money
16:27 Stamp Act turns colonists into revolutionaries
17:45 The point of no return, 1775
19:05 Conclusion

“The $1 Trillion Devil in the Details” (S1 E3, 25:30, March 28, 2019). Why did Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson et al. tell so many lies about the 2008 TARP bailout? First, the lies are exposed with a series of video clips from congressional testimony and trial records. Next, the reasons for the lies are explored, concluding that if people knew why the banks needed bailing out—because 40% of the country’s money supply was on the line—then they would have demanded that the banks be broken up and thereby reduce a major source of the banks’ power. The real significance here is that it’s the seldom-discussed money supply that is the key to banking crises. As we’ll see in the next episode, it’s the banks themselves that create the money supply…

“Mommy, Where Does Money Come From?” (S1 E4, April 16, 2019, 24:11). Only in economics could a debate over a fundamental issue like where money comes from rage needlessly for more than a century. (Alas, one should take this a reliable indication that one of the principal roles of the economics profession is to sow confusion.) That debate gets resolved definitively in this episode, which explains the real-life experiment conducted by Professor Richard Werner, who published his results in a 2014 academic paper. The conclusion? Banks create money—when they make loans. And it is in this fact that we discover both the real reason for the 2008 bank bailout (i.e., the four biggest banks account for 40% of the money supply, and their overnight failure would have massively eclipsed the severity of the Great Depression, which saw a 30% decline in the money supply spread over 4 long years) and the reason for so many lies about the bailout: if people learned the truth, they’d demand that the mega-banks be smashed into a thousand pieces—thereby removing the gun to America’s head from the hands of the banks—an outcome that no self-respecting criminal enterprise would (or did) tolerate.

Season two of Mafiacracy Now explores the behavior of the Federal Reserve, in particular its abuse of the sovereign money-creating privilege to the benefit of its cronies, under the cover of the pandemic.

“Why Is the Federal Reserve Lying About Coronavirus?” (S2 E1, March 29, 2020, 14:29). The debut of season 2 just as covid takes over the news cycle. In this episode we learn that the Federal Reserve is just like commercial banks in that it can print money out of thin air, and that this is indeed what it has done with wild abandon since the alleged pandemic started: $360 billion one week, $590 billion the next week. But the money the Fed prints is reserve funds, which are in a different circuit than the money banks create. We use the latter as money not the former; reserve funds are used only by commercial banks and other central banks and the U.S. government. The Fed’s response to the coronavirus crisis, printing $1 trillion of reserves in order to help Main Street, knowing full well that that money can’t reach Main Street, is an enormous lie.

“The Federal Reserve – Kicking People When They’re Down” (S2 E2, April 10, 2020, 17:55). The Federal Reserve was projecting a Great Depression March 2020. When we say “the Fed” prints money, technically we are referring to the twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks—in New York, San Francisco, Richmond, St. Louis, etc.—and each one of these regional Federal Reserve Banks is privately owned. This is highly curious, because when the Federal Reserve prints money to buy “assets,” and those assets fail and create a hole on “the Fed’s” balance sheet, it is the U.S. taxpayers—not the Fed’s owners—who are on the hook for the losses. And there you have disaster capitalism at its finest, privatizing gains for a tiny elite of money printers, who get to saddle everyone else with their losses, socializing any downside.

“Presenting the Federal Reserve Script for Totalitarianism” (S2 E3, April 20, 2020, 12:57). The Fed dispatches its marketing plan rollout man, Mr. Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, to Face the Nation. His mission? To tell us all how the pandemic is going to unfold. The scripted “interview” between the amateurish Kashkari and the consummately professional Margaret Brennan is deconstructed. The upshot? We can all expect “various phases of rolling flare-ups” for 18 months, coupled with a monster red tape machine that decides who works and who doesn’t—which as it turns out of course is exactly what has transpired (except for the timing—yet). The scripting of the pandemic could not be any more obvious, and it is fully on display in this episode.

“Bad Vibes in the Pan-Depression” (S2 E4, May 2, 2020, 21:05). We go out for bike ride in northeast Indiana for a brief respite from the lockdowns in Chicago. We explain some basics about the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, including how losses are socialized while profits are privatized.

“Is Jerome Powell the Real Keyser Soze?” (S2 E5, May 22, 2020, 31:58). An explanation of the U.S. monetary system using characters from the film The Usual Suspects to explain the relationship between electronic bank money in our accounts, cash, reserves and excess reserves. Also, in the first few minutes of the video, the mechanics of a wire transfer are explained, including the crucial role of reserves in a wire transfer.

“The Fed’s Silent Takeover of the U.S.” (S2 E6, August 12, 2020, 36:14). The Fed’s endlessly repeated claim that reserves don’t “leak out” into the regular economy (remaining instead trapped with the Federal Reserve banking circuit) is examined and found to be a lie by omission. In fact, every dollar the Fed creates in reserves forces the parallel creation of 96 cents by commercial banks in the real economy.

“What’s Behind the Fed’s Manufactured Coin Shortage?” (S2 E7, August 19, 2020, 9:55). The ongoing coin shortage in the U.S. is traced to its origin at the Federal Reserve. Coins are the only form of money in the U.S. not created by the Federal Reserve and thus represent an encroachment, however small, onto the Fed’s sovereign money-issuing turf. The reasons cited by the Fed for the coin shortage are debunked.

Season 3 is ongoing and focuses on the mechanics of money-creation in the U.S., with an eye towards central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which will ultimately spell the end of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.

“Wherefore Art Thou Reserves?” (S3 E1, 35:27). Preview of season 3 (~20 minutes) followed by a demonstration of the true function of reserves, which are critical to the functioning of our debt-based monetary system. This video explains why reserves are necessary in the first place, and in the process demonstrates how reserves are of necessity separate from the broader money supply used by people and non-bank entities.

“Quantitative Easing Is the Biggest Sham Ever” (S3 E2, 26:22). Whenever the subject of QE comes up in conjunction with inflation or the money supply, Federal Reserve apologists almost invariably trot out the same tired canards, the leading one of which is that reserves don’t “leak out” into the broader money supply, or that it’s “just an asset swap,” or that reserves are “balance sheet neutral.” All of these formulations, as it turns out, are massive lies of omission. This video shows that depending on how QE transactions are structured—is the asset seller a commercial bank or (more likely) a non-bank financial company—an asset purchase made with, say, $1 billion of reserves, will cause the generation of $1 billion of new bank money in the broader economy.

“Softball Pfizer Vaccine Rollout Interview Goes Horribly Wrong” (S3 E3, 2:25). An amusing aside. A quick series of cuts from a CNBC interview of Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on the day of the company’s vaccine rollout. Incredibly, he’s surprised by the one question on everyone’s mind: have you taken the vaccine. Bourla answers no and then proceeds to manufacture reasons for his refusal.

Related Links:

• Joht Titus’s YouTube Channel