By James P. Tucker Jr.
If a half-century trend is followed, the secretive international power bloc known as Bilderberg will meet in Europe in 2013 soon after its associated group, the Trilateral Commission (TC), meets in Berlin March 15-17. Normally, Bilderberg—which gathered last year in Chantilly, Virginia—alternates its annual meetings between North America and Europe. However, there is some indication Bilderberg 2013 will alter its pattern and once again meet in the United States, evidently concerned about the increasing public attention it receives from the European media while, quite in contrast, the America media has been more willing to accommodate Bilderberg secrecy.
A source at the November 30-December 3 meeting in Washington of Bilderberg’s North American Group overheard Richard Armitage, a deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, say Bilderberg and the TC are angry over “their constant exposure,” adding that organizers were contemplating holding the next Bilderberg meeting in the U.S. in order to keep a lower profile.
Bilderberg normally schedules meetings two years in advance. To reserve a huge, remote resort, big bucks have to be laid down early. So if Bilderberg intends to change its 2013 hiding place,...
the organizers will have to hustle to make new arrangements.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke repeated much of what he had said behind closed doors at the TC meeting in Washington during a news conference December 12, predicting the U.S. economy would still be in pain until “at least” the middle of 2015. “If the economy actually went off the fiscal cliff . . . that would have significant adverse effects on the economy and on the unemployment rate,” Bernanke told reporters. “We would try to do what we could . . . but I just want to again be clear that we cannot offset the full impact of the fiscal cliff. It’s just too big.”
Fed officials predicted the jobless rate, now at 7.7%, would not reach 6.5% until the end of 2015 at the earliest. But the jobless rate is worse than official figures show: millions of Americans have given up looking, millions more are working at lower-paying jobs and millions more have been downgraded to part time as businesses cut back on staffing to duck high costs of mandated healthcare for full-time employees under “Obamacare.”
If the nation goes over the “fiscal cliff,” a term introduced by Bernanke, more than half of Americans would face a sharp tax hike on January 1, 2013. But millions of Americans who pay no taxes would continue to get “refunds.” Social Security would be threatened because Congress fails to obey its laws. Under the Social Security Act of 1933, payments withheld from workers would be kept in a separate fund, drawing interest. Had this law been obeyed, the fund would have a huge surplus today.
James P. Tucker Jr. is the world’s foremost expert on the global elite. Tucker is AFP’s editor emeritus and the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary.
