Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
And joining me on the phone now is Danny Penzella from something or other.
Danny, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
It's great to be here.
And I'm sorry, what organization are you the head of, the something or other?
Occupy the Fed NYC.
Occupy the Fed NYC.
I like the sound of that.
How different is that from Occupy Wall Street?
Well, what we've been doing is trying to focus the Occupy Wall Street movement on the real head of the snake, which is the Federal Reserve System.
So that's why we've kind of branded ourselves Occupy the Fed.
We're kind of a subgroup of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
And we're just looking to capitalize off their momentum and redirect it into something more productive, a productive goal that's achievable.
You know, some of the protesters down there, they want to end capitalism.
Well, I don't really see how you could ever end trade.
So what we're looking to do is just give them a tangible goal.
Look, we can do this if we unite together.
We can end the Federal Reserve System, or at least start with an audit.
Let's start there.
And we're in the process of developing a manifesto with more clear goals that both the left and the right can get behind, because the right doesn't want a corporate monopoly either.
The right, or at least they profess to want a free market.
So that's really what the goal of Occupy the Fed is.
Well, now listen, I totally agree with you that, well, you know, like the old adage, follow the money.
You follow it all the way back, you get to the Fed.
That's who's in charge of the money is that government agency, independent, though it is, and even though it's all private stock and all that kind of thing.
It's basically they have police power over the interest rates and over the reserve ratios and in regulating the banks and who's allowed to commit how much fraud of what different kind and all of that.
And, you know, this has been really my project on the radio this whole time.
My goal here, what I want to see is a real realignment between the good parts of the right, that is, who are against this kind of manipulation of the money supply to all of our detriment, who are against the foreign interventionism, and the good leftists who are opposed to the very same kind of corporate welfare, whether they, you know, have read Rothbard's What Has Government Done to Our Money yet or not.
They're still against a lot of the very same system there and with the libertarians as the real center.
Instead of having these John McCain, liberal Republicans, and Chuck Schumer conservative Democrats as the center, we'll have Ron Paul as the center, LewRockwell.com as the center.
And we're the ones who are good on everything, wars and corporatism and all of this stuff.
And even if we can't, you know, end the Fed now, at least we can, and if we can't get all these liberals and leftists to understand and agree about ending the Fed right now, certainly they can see that, and we can all agree, the good parts of the left, the right, and all the libertarians, I hope, can agree that kicking all the billionaires off welfare and limiting their ability and Congress' ability to hand them our money is, you know, our paramount interest.
These are the people who are responsible for screwing everything up and then they're the ones who get all the benefits when everything falls apart.
Everybody can agree on that.
You don't have to be any political description to understand what's going on there.
Absolutely, and that's really what we're trying to do is educate Occupy Wall Street.
The main resistance that we get when we say we want to end the Fed from Occupy Wall Street and the left protesters is they hear that we want to end regulation.
And in a sense, in a libertarian sense, yes, we do want to end regulation, but really what we want to do is end the corporate monopoly, because the Fed, while the Board of Governors is a federal agency, and is allegedly a regulatory agency that is supposed to regulate the Fed and its member banks, you and I, and I'm sure your listeners know, that the federal agency is stacked with executives from the very same shareholder banks, you know, Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America.
So there's no regulation going on.
The foxes have the keys to the henhouse.
All they do is regulate their competition.
They regulate the middle class.
They regulate small businesses and banks.
These are the people that get regulated so that they can never really compete with the top 1%.
So what we're all interested in, obviously, is for the left to end that monopoly control, because that's really where they can enter the government.
They can print as much money as they want to buy off whoever they want.
That's how they maintain that 1% maintained control over our government by being able to buy them off, and the right wants to end their control or should want to end their control if we educate them on the real issue, because we don't have a free market.
We have a centrally planned economy.
You know, the Fed is really a socialist organization.
It socializes the debt.
It socializes the losses so that the middle class and the working class are picking up the tab, and it privatizes its profits and gains and sends that overseas so they don't have to pay taxes on it.
So the Federal Reserve is not a capitalist entity.
It's a socialist entity.
I would call it a fascist entity because it's married to the government.
So there's absolutely a way to present the case to both the left and the right that we all need to be in agreement that we need to end the Federal Reserve system.
Now, there are many different ways we can do that.
One of the, like I was saying before, the resistance I'm getting on Wall Street is that they see it as you want to end regulation.
You want to allow the banks to do whatever they want.
No, I want to encourage the free market so that Danny Pandela can compete with George Soros.
If there's no special crony capitalists, sweetheart deals, and special treatment by the government, if George Soros can't use, or Warren Buffett for that matter, can't use the federal government as their strongman to oppress the middle class, then everybody has an equal shot, and you can get to a more fair and equitable distribution of wealth.
And when you speak to people at Occupy Wall Street who do tend to be more left-leaning, some of them are outright socialists or communists, when you speak to them in those terms, you can make them understand that you really have the same goal because the free market does distribute wealth fairly.
He who works will eat, and he who doesn't won't.
And we all know private charity can make up for those who can't work or are disabled or elderly, etc.
Well, you know, a little bit of history can be very effective, I think, on this point, that it was National City Bank and J.P. Morgan who came together and wrote the Federal Reserve Act in the first place, and then they actually gave speeches opposing it, and saying, oh no, this is Bolshevism, this will destroy Wall Street, please don't throw us in the briar patch, and they were the ones who wrote the dang thing.
Absolutely.
It was all a scam from the very beginning.
It was regulations for them.
As Ed Griffin put it years ago, the name of the game is bailout.
That's what the Fed is.
It's the lender of last resort.
That's right.
It makes sure these banks run at the red line every single day, and then when they fail, don't worry, we'll counterfeit money, and in other words, take the value right out of yours.
That's right.
One of the ways that we're doing this, that we're educating the people on Wall Street, is I've created what I call a Bernanke Buck.
And this is a flyer.
It looks like a dollar bill.
You can see it on TrueSquad.tv if you want to check it out.
And I just ordered 10,000 of these, and we're distributing them.
So on the front it looks like a dollar with Bernanke's face in the middle, and then on the back it explains exactly what you just said about how the bankers got together, created this allegedly financial reform regulation bill, and then handed it off to Nelson Rockefeller, who then presented it to the Congress and sold it as such.
But really it was written by the very bank that it was purporting to regulate.
So when people read this, they're like, huh, really, I thought the Federal Reserve was a...
It was Nelson Aldrich, Nelson Rockefeller's grandfather.
Yes, right, I'm sorry.
Whose daughter had just married John Rockefeller Jr.
He was the guy in the Senate who shepherded it.
In fact, they introduced his version, got laughed out of there, because everybody knew he was Rockefeller's man.
So they had the Democrats introduce the exact same bill in the House, and that was the one they all pretended to oppose, which was the exact same thing with the paragraphs in a different order.
Anyway, great fun.
The Wilson administration is my favorite.
All right, hang tight right there, everybody.
We're talking with Danny Penzella from Occupy the Fed, NYC, the libertarian part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
We'll be talking more about the realignment and getting things right after this.
All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
On the line is Danny Penzella from Occupy the Fed, NYC.
He's been taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement down there, representing the libertarian view.
And, you know, what's great about the liberal misunderstanding of the libertarian position, Danny, is that setting them straight quick and easy can be very easy and very powerful when done right.
You know, obviously when you show up, they think somehow, because they read it on the Daily Kos or whatever, that you're actually there to defend these criminal bankers who ran off with everybody's money, that you're there saying, oh, no, please liberate these bankers to hurt us even worse or whatever.
So when you cut to the chase that, no, these men are evil, I'm just saying look at the, you know, the chairman of Goldman Sachs was running the Treasury Department.
I'm just following the bad guy's career around and seeing who's doing the stealing and how they're getting it done.
And it's their control of the state that empowers them rather than empowers us over them and that kind of thing.
You can, I think, really change somebody's mind quick with an argument like that, when they understand that your position is actually 180 degrees from what they were assuming it was.
Absolutely.
Well, one of the techniques that I use is I listen to the person that I'm talking to.
I want to define what their concerns are, why they're involved in the Occupy Movement.
And then I can tailor my message to speak to that, whether it's economics or social issues.
And then I can tailor how I speak to them based on that.
So that's really key because, you know, that saying, people don't care what you know until they know that you care.
So if you approach it from that angle, you know, I've seen other people come down, libertarians, and just kind of preach at people and just want to impose their view.
And they just get they get into arguments.
And I have not been in one argument yet.
Debate?
Absolutely.
Healthy debate?
Lively debate?
Yes.
But I have not had any conflict because of the way I approach it.
And I think really that's the smart way to do it.
And also, you know, as libertarians, we have to accept the fact that we are nothing like the majority of political views represented in America, whatever, however you say that in English correctly.
You know what I mean?
If we want what we want, such as, for example, an end to the world empire, an end to trillions of dollars worth of bailouts for politically connected banks and corporations all over the world at our expense, etc.
We have to make allies with these people.
We can't just convert them all.
It can't just all be about the Federal Reserve.
It's got to be about, look, at least let's figure out exactly who our enemy is and what it is that they're up to.
And I think that with the Tea Party movement, which was born in opposition to all the spending and all the debt, and they deliberately, at least at first and maybe to some degree now, issued social issues and said, no, we're just focused on our fiscal and monetary problems.
With the campaign of Ron Paul going on for at least another three quarters of a year or something like that, at the minimum serving as an example of a libertarian being the best on war in the whole society out of everybody, pretty much.
This kind of thing, it seems like this is, with all the economic turmoil and whatever, this is a real opportunity.
It's almost unavoidable that old categories fall apart and that really town and country aren't so much opposed to each other on this.
The regions don't necessarily need to be opposed to each other on this.
Country and rock and roll, you know, liberal and conservative lifestyles or whatever, don't have to be on opposite sides of any of these issues.
It's pretty clear that the empire and the corporate welfare is at the expense of all of us.
And these are the two things, especially in the Bill of Rights, of course, but these are the things that are hurting us the most.
And these are the things that it ought to be super majorities of the country can agree on, political parties notwithstanding.
Absolutely.
And that is exactly what Occupy the Fed is about.
It's about trying to bridge that gap between the left and the right and really just get them to listen to each other.
Because if they listen to each other, they will see when you cut through the rhetoric and when you cut through the proposed solutions, and it's really just about ego, when you put down your ego, you realize that everybody really just wants the same thing.
We want to be free and we want to have equality and all those things can happen if we put down our egos, if we work together.
You know, people have said, well, the Tea Party says, well, I'm not going to work with them.
They're all Marxists and socialists.
And there's a lot of that attitude at Occupy as well.
I'm not working with the Tea Party.
They like to use another phrase that I won't use.
But when we put down our egos and when we say, you know what, even though we may not agree on all the solutions, we do agree on the problem.
So let's highlight the problem.
Let's force our representatives to face the problem and deal with it in a really honest way.
But that takes education because we need to know what the real problems are.
So that's where I feel like Occupy the Fed, the whole movement, and there's chapters all over the country popping up.
I want to give it the website is OccupytheFed.net.
You can go there and find out where the demonstration is in your area.
And if there isn't one in your area, you can start one, email it in.
We'll post up the information on the website so that people in your area can find you.
We're also encouraging people, if there is no Fed in your area and you can't get to a Fed, start one in front of one of the Fed banks.
If there's a JPMorgan Chase in your area, start a demonstration in front of there or in front of your town hall, wherever it is.
Just get out there and take action to bring awareness to the issue.
So we just feel like this is ground zero.
This is an education movement.
And if we can, one person at a time, just show them the danger of the Fed, of a private corporation centrally planning our economy, and how that has led to this economic inequality, then we really can win this thing.
It's game over for the Fed and for that top 1% that is trying desperately to hold on to that wealth.
And right now, there is a full-time infiltration of Occupy Wall Street.
The establishment left has come in hard, and they are really working hard to get this thing.
Occupy Wall Street in New York, MoveOn.org, and some other organizations have come in, and they're really trying hard to kind of institutionalize and take over and become the voice.
And they do that by buying influence.
You know, we can give you this, and we can give you funding, and they buy influence.
And then the revolution becomes the establishment.
And I'm watching that happen, and it's really sad.
There are some people down there that are very committed to not being co-opted.
And, you know, a lot of times we have people kind of attack us as libertarians.
Oh, we don't want libertarians here.
And then there will be other people who are leftists, but they're sincere and honest, and they say, listen, the libertarians are part of the 99% as well.
They have just as much right to be here as anybody else.
So this is kind of the battle that we're fighting on the ground.
And, you know, I just would encourage anybody to, even if you're just curious, you don't have to come down and start preaching the free market, but just come down and check it out, talk to people, listen to people, and just see what the concerns are all about.
And I really think that this could be a very powerful movement if we're very careful to not let it get co-opted.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I would very much like to believe that the Democrats are going to have a hard time at the core of this thing, our left-wing activists who went down there and started this.
It's, you know, clearly born in frustration of the fact that Barack Obama is nothing like what they wanted him to be.
He's a Goldman Sachs guy.
That's why they're there in the first place.
The Democratic Party ought to be the biggest laughingstock of the entire event.
That's right.
And I think that that's the reason why it took Occupy Wall Street a little bit longer to wake up than the Tea Party, because they expected Obama to come in and give them that change they were looking for.
Well, now, three years later, and they realize that he's a Wall Street candidate as well.
So now they've woken up.
And this is why I've really been preaching this, that the Tea Party and Occupy movements really need to join forces, because they really started for the same reason when you get right down to it.
And if they could work together, we really could see some change that will benefit the people and not that 1%.
So we are having an event on November 22nd, which is generally end of Fed Day.
We're going to have a big event in New York City.
I'm bringing in some special guests.
I don't want to tip the hat just yet.
But check that out.
You can search Occupy the Fed NYC on Facebook, or you can go to facebook.com/BernankeBucks.
And we just purchased 10,000 BernankeBucks.
We're going to ship them all over the country and use them here in New York.
If anybody wants to help out with defray the cost of that, you can make a donation at that Facebook page.
Again, just search BernankeBucks.
We really appreciate every dollar that comes in donations just goes right to the printer to just keep printing out more BernankeBucks.
We just keep running out of these things.
And what's the website for that again?
Facebook.com/BernankeBucks.
And the website for Occupy the Fed is OccupyTheFed.net.
And if you don't have a demonstration near you, please start one.
And let us know so we can post up your information.
We'll direct it to your website or whatever you have so people can find you.
Hey, thanks very much for your time.
I really appreciate it, Danny.
No problem.
Thanks for having me on, Scott.
That's Danny Panzella, everybody.
OccupyTheFed.net.
Free marketeers down at Occupy Wall Street.
