5 “If mind is common to us all, then we have reason also in common – that which makes us rational beings. If so, then common too is the reason which dictates what we should or should not do. If so, then law too is common to us all. If so, then we are citizens. If so, we share in a constitution. If so, the universe is a kind of community. In what else could one say that the whole human race shares a common constitution.” – MARCUS AURELIUS P resident John F. Kennedy once said, “We choose to…do [these] things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.” President Kennedy was addressing mankind’s efforts to go to the moon. His words express precisely how I feel about researching and writing The State of Our Pension Funds for the 2017 Annual Wrap Up. It’s also how I feel about spending two decades looking for tril- lions of dollars missing from federal accounts. Addressing the pension funds meant coming full circle to where my journey began – the journey that led me to start the Solari Report. It began with my efforts in the mid-1990’s working with government and pension fund officials to help the American people navigate the financial impact of globalization. My proposals were inspired by my simulations of county-by-county financial maps. These are described in my online book Dillon Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Stock Profits – https://dillonreadandco.com. If we had re-engineered government spending from a negative return on investment to taxpayers to a positive return – and done so in a manner that generated significant capital gains for pension funds by creating financial wealth in our local and general economies made possible by the application of new technologies – we could have created sufficient wealth to ensure that the pension funds could fulfill their obligations to beneficiaries, including the baby-boomer generation. Of course, that would mean subjecting gov- ernment spending and investment to the laws governing appropriations and federal finances, as well as performance criteria rather than using the government to launder money for political purpose, to shift our accumulated savings behind the wall of national-security secrets, and to generate “fees for our friends.” My proposals were not adopted. Instead, the leadership of the financial system engineered a financial coup d’état – significantly deepening the negative returns of government spending and investment. This included simply shifting trillions of dollars out of the US government behind the wall of national-security state se- crecy. It also included creating false flag events and falsifying the evidence to justify wars without end while rounding up minorities and railroading them into prison labor camps to serve the military, other government agencies and their corporate contractors, and vendors at taxpayer expense. I first learned of this plan from the President of CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest pension fund in the country. The CalPERS President warned me in the spring of 1997, “They have given up on the country. They are moving all the mon- ey out starting in the fall.” That was the fall of 1997 – the beginning of fiscal 1998. Billions started to go missing from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as HUD, with the help of the Treasury, the Fed- eral Reserve, the NY Fed and Department of Justice, began to engineer the largest housing $14.99 / non-fiction / financial Catherine Austin Fitts is the publisher of The Solari Re- port and managing member of Solari Investment Advi- sory Services, LLC and Sea Lane Advisory, LLC. Catherine is the former president of The Hamilton Securi- ties Group, Assistant Secretary of Housing– Federal Housing Commissioner in the first Bush Administration, and managing director and member of the board of the Wall Street investment bank, Dillon, Read & Co. Inc.Catherine has served as a member of the board of the Student Loan Marketing Association (Sallie Mae), the National Multi Housing Council, First American Corp. and First American Bankshares, Carteret Savings Bank, F.A, the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences, the Wharton Business School Club of New York, Bank Street College and the New York City Food Bank. Catherine has also served as a member of the advisory council of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Emerging Markets Advisory Committee of the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and the Graduate Ex- ecutive Board, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Catherine received her BA in History from the University of Pennsylvania and her MBA from The Wharton School. She studied Mandarin at the Yale-in-China Language Institute of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She graduated from the Friends Select School in Philadelphia where she also served on the board. Catherine publishes a column in Scoop Media in New Zealand and blogs at The Solari Report at www.solari.com/blog. ISBN 0-609-81011-1 Published by SOLARI, INC. Copyright © 2011. All Rights Reserved. “Financial Coup d’Etat is orem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in volup- tate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupi- datat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit.” — William Hamilton CAthErInE AuStIn FIttS Former Assistant Secretary of HousingFederal Housing Commissioner Financial Coupd’Etat An Insider’s Story About Engineering Public Loss For Private Gain Financial Coup d ‘Etat: An Insiders Story About Engineering Public Loss for Public Gain DILLONREAD &THE ARISTOCRACY OF STOCK PROFITS An Insider’s Story about Engineering Public Loss for Private Gain Catherine Austin Fitts Former Assistant Secetary of Housing Federal Housing Commissioner