Does Obama's War Against Libya Have Something to do With the Federal Reserve Bailing Out Libya?

The more you study American politics since the 1913 Federal Reserve Act, the more you realize how much it truly stinks. Take for instance Obama's illegal war against Qaddafi in Libya in which Obama has chosen to support forces that contain members of Al Qaeda. It's quite confusing, I know. The federal government tells us Al Qaeda is the enemy and then supports their side when it comes to launching a war against Libya.

Now Rolling Stone is by far one of my least favorite magazines when it comes to political debate. However, they have this interesting piece in the latest edition which may explain another truth about why Obama launched an illegal war against Libya while choosing to support the side which members of Al Qaeda serve.

Barack Obama recently issued an executive order imposing a wave of sanctions against Libya, not only freezing Libyan assets, but barring Americans from having business dealings with Libyan banks.

So raise your hand if you knew that the United States has been extending billions of dollars in aid to Qaddafi and to the Central Bank of Libya, through a Libyan-owned subsidiary bank operating out of Bahrain. And raise your hand if you knew that, just a week or so after Obama’s executive order, the U.S. Treasury Department quietly issued an order exempting this and other Libyan-owned banks to continue operating without sanction.

Tell me you aren't surprised!

An investigation in light of these events discovered the Federal Reserve made $26 billion in cheap loans to the controversial bank described above. The interest rates on these loans that went into Libya were about one quarter of one percent.

As Bernie’s (Senator Bernie Sanders) staff was going through this list, it found, among other things, some $26 billion in extremely cheap loans (as low as one quarter of one percent!) extended to this ABC bank over a period of years, beginning in December of 2007 and continuing through as recently as February of 2010. The senator sent a letter to Ben Bernanke over the winter demanding more information about this loan (among others) but the response he got was completely unhelpful.

When I first started working on this story, one of Sanders’s aides was careful to point out the ABC loans. Later, I took a closer look at the company and found that it was 59% owned by the Central Bank of Libya, which I found very odd, even by the generally insane standards of the bailout era. Why, I wondered, would the Federal Reserve be giving Muammar Qaddafi $26 billion in near-zero interest loans? Exactly how does that address America’s financial problems? What bailout plan could that possibly be part of?

It gets weirder from there. Sanders’s office subsequently found out that ABC is not only exempt from Obama’s sanctions, it has two functioning branches here in New York City. In a letter he sent yesterday evening to Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency chief John Walsh (the banking regulator with purview over the New York branches), Bernie Sanders put it this way:

Why would the U.S. government allow a bank that is predominantly owned by the Central Bank of Libya – an institution on which the U.S. has imposed strict economic sanctions – to operate two banking branches within our own borders?

Neither the Fed nor Treasury so far has offered explanations for these loans; the Treasury has so far only explained why ABC was not subject to sanctions and pointed to the March 4th order when I contacted them.

Now I have a question. I thought the United States wasn't going to assist terrorist states. No I know they have compromised on Libya, but why did they take this much of a chance in order to provide possible financing for terrorism, which Libya has been known for, in light of 9/11? This whole thing stinks. You have to wonder why we are fighting a war now that this has come to light. Did our money go to finance terrorism?