There’s some misinformation quickly spreading about Facebook taking down all content where people are organizing protests against state “orders.”   In reality what Facebook is doing is responding to requests from state officials to remove content the state dictators claim is defiance of their orders.  Facebook is complying with those removal requests.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO – “If someone is spreading something that is misinformation—certainly, someone saying that social distancing is not effective to help limit the spread of coronavirus—we do classify that as harmful misinformation and we take that down.”

“At the same time, it’s important for people to debate policies, basically give their opinions on different things, so there’s a line on this. But more than normal political discourse, I think, a lot of the things people are saying that is false around a health emergency can be classified as harmful misinformation that has a risk of leading to physical danger, and we will take that down.”

The latest effort by authoritarian-minded state governor should not come as a surprise.  These are overwhelmingly blue state (democrat) governors.  It is important to keep in mind the ‘stay-at-home’  and other restrictions on liberty are not laws per se’, they are orders by state governors.  The authoritarian request to block protest organizing on social media is an extension of the state’s ideological perspectives.  Freedom is a tenuous proposition.

All of the various restrictions coming from state governors in response to the COVID-19 do not come from State House and/or State Senate decisions. These are not laws.

The rules restricting liberty, in response to the crisis, have been pronounced without any representative voice supporting them. All of the rules are arbitrary, and many of these rules will be challenged in court.

However, until those court challenges take place, the only option for a redress of grievance comes in the form of public protest. Currently, there is no way for an citizen to appeal to a representative voice against the decrees from a state governor; other than a public protest…. This is a critical point; because non-representative government was the origination of the first great American rebellion against dictates from King George III.

Rebellion against unilateral and authoritarian power is America. Rebellion or push-back against non-representative government is the thread that connects the varying patchworks of our constitutional republic. Protest is so critical to our nation that it is protected within the very first amendment to our constitution.

Blue state governors have united to begin an economic civil war and block any White House effort to re-open the U.S. economy.  Enforcement of these unilateral orders is part of that plan.  The governors must use all censorship tools to retain their totalitarian agenda.

Again, this is all very predictable, during this economic war residents within the Blue occupied territories will be held captive to the political whims of their regional generals.

The economic freedom and liberty zone will encompass the Red region. The center of the country, mid west, southern region (surrounding the Gulf of Mexico) and south eastern Atlantic region. These areas will be open to commerce and economic freedom.

However, the urban dense populations (Blue pockets within Red zones) will push-back against the efforts of the Red generals in an attempt to retain alignment with their Blue team generals. Depending on the strength of the urban forces there may be roadblocks, sabotage, skirmishes and political violence against the freedom & liberty Red team.

Red captives within the Blue zones will have to be smart and strategic. Big Blue tech will be assisting the totalitarian Blue generals. Direct confrontation against the Blue forces should be avoided, and it will likely be a better strategy to fight stealthily as insurgents.

Any Red team member of the economic freedom alliance, trapped within a Blue region, is warned to evaluate their connection to their electronic devices. Your cell phones could be used as portable transponders expose your movement and your political views.

This is going to be one hell of a ideological battle. A Spring and Summer conflict like we’ve never seen in the history of U.S. politics.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appears on CNN to discuss the ongoing congressional funding issues around the Paycheck Protection Program.  Mnuchin notes the effectiveness of the Trump/Mnuchin community banks responding to their small business customers on Main Street.  This success was specifically by design and foresight two years ago.

It is important to remember the modernized community and credit union banking system was specifically created by the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018 to be the direct conduit to main street.  It is likely the effectiveness of that agile financial system has actually stunned the institutional banks and their UniParty big club politicians.  The Big Club didn’t realize how nimble the banking system was that Trump/Mnuchin created.

In my opinion, the effectiveness of the community and credit union banking system has turned the eye of Sauron onto them.  Thus the Wall St. multinational banks are attempting to punish the White House by activating their paid footsoldiers in congress to impede it.

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Congress (both sides) are not blocking the PPP funding program (via SBA for Main Street) for the reasons most people think.  Pelosi and McConnell are both trying to help their Big Bank/Big Club, Wall Street, benefactors by punishing customers of the Main St banking system Trump/Mnuchin put into place two years ago….

It’s a much bigger battle than most understand.

In late October 2017 the Senate voted, narrowly, to strike down a CFPB banking rule that was set to begin in 2019. The CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), is the watchdog financial agency created by Congress in the aftermath of the mortgage mess.

The CFPB rule, five years in the making, would have allowed individual and class action lawsuits against financial institutions by consumers and lawyers instead of arbitration to settle disputes. The Democrats and those who supported the rule framed the arguments around protecting consumers from predatory banks. However, those against the rule pointed out the cost to smaller banks, community banks and credit unions.

Big banks and multinational financial enterprises (ie. The Big Club) can afford massive groups of lawyers to defend their interests; smaller community banks and credit unions cannot afford such litigious costs. The K-Street lobbyists were against the regulatory rule as a natural outcome of their general disposition toward regulation. However, K-Street was specifically ambivalent to the final senate vote because increased systemic regulation supports their competitive ability to dominate the U.S. financial system.

Trump and Mnuchin viewed the entire U.S. banking system as too monolithic and generally positioned to the benefit of Wall Street and not Main Street. As such their approach toward regulation was to split the regulatory financial system into two segments according to the size of the bank (or financial entity). Big institutional banks (more than $10 billion) retained comprehensive regulation over their practices; however, smaller banks do not have the same level of regulatory and compliance mandates. This approach is the modern era financial outlook that, like MAGAnomics, is entirely new and bold.

“we do not support a separation of banks from investment banks, we think that would have a very significant problem on the financial markets, on the economy, on liquidity; and we think that there is proper things that potentially we could look at around regulation, but we do not support a separation of banks and investment banks.”

~ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifying to the Senate Banking Committee, May 18th 2017

At first blush that statement from Secretary Mnuchin might seem to run counter to the Trump administration’s prior policy statements outlining a preference for a reinstatement of some form of “Glass-Steagall” regulatory separation between commercial banking and investment banking. However, it doesn’t.

When combined with the totality of Mnuchin’s testimony before the Senate Finance Committee, Mnuchin is saying the current “too big to fail” (‘too big to succeed’) issue had created a problem for lending liquidity. Specifically, if divisional separation is required – the banks’ best interests would naturally put the investment division ahead of commercial lending and the liquid capital within the overall U.S. economy would shrink.

After watching hours of interviews and presentations, and after looking at the policy briefs from within the Mnuchin led Treasury, CTH understood what the administration was  doing based on the executive orders signed earlier in the year….

Back in July 2010 when Dodd-Frank banking regulation was passed into law, there were approximately 12 to 17 banks who fell under the definition of “too big to fail”.

Meaning 12 to 17 financial institutions could individually negatively impact the economy, and were going to force another TARP-type bailout if they failed in the future. Dodd-Frank regulations were supposed to ensure financial security, and the elimination of risk via taxpayer bailouts, by placing mandatory minimums on how much secure capital was required to be held in order to operate “a bank”.

One large downside to Dodd-Frank was that in order to hold the required capital, all banks decreased lending to shore-up their liquid holdings and meet the regulatory minimums.

Without the ability to borrow funds, small businesses have a hard time raising money to modernize or create new business. In the big picture growth in the larger economy is hampered by the absence of capital.

Another downstream effect of banks needing to increase their liquid holdings was exponentially worse. Less liquid large banks needed to purchase and absorb the financial assets of more liquid large banks in order to meet the regulatory requirements. Indeed this is exactly what happened.

In 2010 there were approximately twelve “too big to fail banks”, and that was seen as a risk within the economy, and more broad-based banking competition was needed to be more secure.

Unfortunately, because of Dodd-Frank, by 2016 those twelve banks had merged into only four even bigger banks that were now even bigger risks; albeit supposedly more financially secure in their liquid holdings. This ‘less banks’ reality was opposite of the desired effect.

The four to six big banks (JP Morgan-Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, US BanCorp and Mellon) now control $9+ trillion (that’s “TRILLION). Their size is so enormous that small number of banks now control most of the U.S. financial market.

Because they control so much of the financial market, instituting a Glass-Steagall firewall between commercial and investment divisions (in addition to the Dodd-Frank liquid holding requirements), would mean the capability of small and mid-size businesses to get the loans needed to expand or even keep their operations running would stop.

2010’s “Too few, too big to fail” became 2016’s “EVEN FEWER, EVEN BIGGER to fail”.

That’s the underlying problem for a Glass-Steagall type of regulation now. The Democrats created Dodd-Frank which:

•#1 generated constraints on the economy (less lending),

•#2 made fewer banking options available (banks merged),

•#3 made top banks even bigger.

This problem is why President Trump and Secretary Mnuchin created a parallel banking system of smaller community and credit union banks that are external to Dodd Frank regulations and can act as the primary commercial banks for small to mid-sized businesses.

This intended banking design of smaller, more connected to Main Street lending, is why President Trump and Secretary Mnuchin did not support the CFPB banking rule that allowed lawsuits against all financial entities.

The goal of “Glass Steagall”, ie. Commercial division -vs- Investment division, was actually achieved by generating an entirely new system of banks under different regulation. The currently remaining ten U.S. “big banks” operate as “investment division banks” per se’, and are subject to larger regulatory requirements. However, the lesser regulated community banks/credit unions operate as the “Commercial Side” benefiting Main Street.

Instead of fire-walling an individual bank internally within its organization, the Trump/Mnuchin plan fire-walled the banking ‘system’ within the U.S. internally.

Hope that makes sense.