The Obama administration’s plans to reform and regulate the securities industry is generally being received by the mainstream press as the beginning of long overdue oversight into financial market activities. Obama’s plan places the Federal Reserve as the lead oversight agency.

But the Federal Reserve is not an agency. It is a private bank. It is also the private bank most responsible for creating the circumstances that led to our current economic crisis.

Since the U.S. has been involved in a defacto bankruptcy since 1933, it is reasonable to assume that Obama did not name the Federal Reserve as the lead agency for economic reform but as the creditors tasked with closing the book on the 76-year bankruptcy proceeding.

"Our framework for financial regulation is riddled with gaps, weaknesses and jurisdictional overlaps, and suffers from an outdated conception of financial risk," wrote U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and chief White House economic adviser Larry Summers in an opinion piece published in the Washington Post June 15, 2009.

"That’s why....the administration will put forward a plan to modernize financial regulation and supervision. The goal is to create a more stable regulatory regime that is flexible and effective; that is able to secure the benefits of financial innovation while guarding the system against its own excess," they said in The Washington Post opinion piece.

The plan is being lauded as a "monumental regulatory overhaul" that takes on some of the hands-off policies advocated by ex-Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The irony is that Summers is directly responsible for the current crisis. As treasury secretary under Clinton (1999-January, 2001), he shaped and promoted the deregulation scheme responsible for the problems we are currently experiencing. He also helped repeal the Glass-Steagall Act which had been put in place to prevent these kinds of banking abuses from happening.

So far, this "monumental overhaul" is being underreported in the corporate media. But the alternative media is on the job.

Paul Joseph Watson and Steve Watson, writing for Prison Planet.com on June 18, 2009, stated that, "President Obama’s plan to give the privately-owned and unaccountable Federal Reserve complete regulatory oversight across the entire U.S. economy, which is likely to be enacted before the end of the year, will officially herald the beginning of a new form of government in the United States - an ultra-powerful banking dictatorship controlled by a small gaggle of shadowy and corrupt elitists."

The Watson brothers observed that the Federal Reserve will have more control over the U.S. economy than the central banks of communist China and the former Soviet Union because, as former Fed Chairman and chief architect of this economic coup d’etat Alan Greenspan told Jim Lehrer Sept. 18, 2007, "…the Federal Reserve is an independent agency and that means, basically, that there is no other agency in government which can overrule actions that we take."

According to Greenspan, the Federal Reserve is not subject to any agency oversight or audit and is accountable only to its stockholders.

"Obama’s regulatory ‘reform’ plan is nothing less than a green light for the complete and total takeover of the United States by a private banking cartel that will usurp the power of existing regulatory bodies, who are now being blamed for the financial crisis in order that their status can be abolished and their roles handed over to the all-powerful Fed," the Watsons observed.

According to an Associated Press report from June 19, Democrat leadership will push to enact the reforms by the end of the year and Republicans and Democrats in both houses have indicated that they won’t stand in the way of the overhaul.

Curiously, HR 1207, a bill to amend Title 31 of U.S. Code to amend the manner in which the Federal Reserve is audited, was introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Feb. 26, 2009 and now has 237 (predominantly Republican) co-sponsors. If each co-sponsor were to vote "yea" on the bill, it would pass. It has been speculated that the Federal Reserve would lose its charter if an audit were actually performed. But the bill has not been brought to the floor for a vote in the House and the Senate version (S 604), introduced by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) March 16, 2009, has only two cosponsors thus far. It is also likely that Obama would veto the bill if it passed both houses.

The Obama administration, appears confident that neither HR 1207 nor S 604 will pass in time to stop his "reform" plan from going into effect by the end of the year. "The final plan….is expected to sidestep most jurisdictional disputes and simply impose across the board standards to be applied by all financial regulators, according to administration and industry sources," The Washington Times reported.

An op-ed piece in The LA Times observed that the government, in conjunction with the private Federal Reserve, would effectively have the clout to simply seize and take over any company it desires.

"In other words, the Fed, which is already totally unaccountable to Congress, is to be placed in complete control of the entirety of the U.S. financial system, to do as it wishes without repercussion," the Watsons concluded.

* Rothschild Banks of London and Berlin

* Lazard Brothers Bank of Paris

* Israel Moses Sieff Banks of Italy

Warburg Bank of Hamburg, Germany and Amsterdam

* Kuhn Loeb Bank of New York

* Lehman Brothers Bank of New York

* Goldman Sachs Bank of New York

* Chase Manhattan Bank of New York (Rockefeller Family)

"Picture a party of the nation’s greatest bankers stealing out of New York on a private railroad car under cover of darkness, stealthily heading hundreds of miles South, embarking on a mysterious launch, sneaking onto an island deserted by all but a few servants, living there a full week under such rigid secrecy that the names of not one of them was once mentioned lest the servants learn the identity and disclose to the world this strangest, most secret expedition in the history of American finance."

"Mr. Chairman, we have in this Country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks, hereinafter called the Fed." ~Louis T. McFadden (1934)

Change.