The Shocking and Dark History of Amtrak

amtrak logo

As you well know, Amtrak has been in the news recently after one of
its trains derailed while its conductor was asleep at the wheel. As
usual, the media is asking all the wrong questions. That’s because very
few people know the history of Amtrak. If you don’t happen to be one of
them, the truth will shock you. ~ Jason Stapleton – Video

Amtrak is a government owned Railroad Company operated by more
than 20k union workers, has a CEO appointed by the President of the
United States and a budget allocated by Congress.

Amtrak receives over $1 billion a year in subsidies from Congress and
has lost money every year for the 43 years it’s been in existence. In
fact, every time a passenger rides Amtrak the railroad loses $32.

So why do we even have Amtrak? Why does the government own a railroad
and why would it continue to dole out money every year to provide a
service like rail travel when we already have cars, buses and air
transportation, most of which is cheaper than riding Amtrak?

It’s easy to discount this as more government waste, a program that
was started with the best of intentions but has failed to live up to the
expectations. But if you believe that, you’d be wrong.

To learn the real story we have to go back to 1970.

At that time, Penn Central railroad was the nation’s largest railroad
with 96,000 employees and a payroll of 20 million a week. But in 1970
it also became the nation’s biggest bankruptcy.

Because of its poor management, Penn Central owned money to just about everyone.  The list of creditors included:

  • Chase
  • Morgan Guaranty,
  • First National,
  • Chemical bank
  • Continental bank

That’s just to name a few. In order to secure the massive loans, the
company had appointed officers at the largest of those banks to sit on
the board of directors. And over time they even began to acquire control
over the railroad’s management.

This was incredibly beneficial for the banks, as you can imagine.
Most notably because it made them privy to information long before the
public received it and long before the news would affect the share price
of Penn Central’s Stock.

In G. Edward Griffen’s book The Creature from Jekyll Island, he quotes Chris Welles who wrote the following.

“On May 21, a month before the railroad went under, David Bevan,
Penn Central’s chief financial officer, privately informed
representatives of the company’s banking creditors that its financial
condition was so weak it would have to postpone an attempt to raise 100
million dollars in desperately needed operating funds through a bond
issue. 

Instead, said Bevan, the railroad would seek some kind of
government loan guarantee. In other words, unless the railroad could
manage a federal bailout it would have to close down.  The following
day, Chase Manhattan’s trust department sold 134,300 shares of its Penn
Central holdings.

Before May 28, when the public was informed of the
postponement of the bond issue, Chase sold another 128,000 shares. 
David Rockefeller, the bank’s chairman, vigorously denied Chase had
acted on the basis of insider information.”

Now keep in mind these bankers were deeply involved in the decision
making at Penn- not just as its board of directors but in many cases its
management. The poor management that caused the demise of Penn Central
was a direct cause of the poor management by the banks that loaned Penn
its money.

Griffen further writes in his book:

“The banks provided large loans for disastrous expansion and
diversification projects. Then they loaned additional millions to the
railroad so it could pay dividends to its stockholders.

This created the
false appearance of prosperity and artificially inflated the market
price of its stock long enough to dump it on the unsuspecting public.”

So while the bankers were managing Penn Central into the ground they
were also artificially inflating the value of Penn’s stock by loaning
Penn money to pay dividends on stock that they owned.

They then made money on the interest Penn paid on those loans, and
finally they were able to unload their shares at a premium price before
the market was aware of the bankruptcy because they were privy to
insider information since the sat on the board.

And if that’s not incredible and devious enough, it only gets worse.

You see that Penn was set to go into bankruptcy and the loans those
banks held were at risk of default. To the bankers that owned Penn Debt,
this was unacceptable. Luckily for them, the Federal Reserve was
created for just a situation such as this.

The Fed considered just doing a direct cash infusion of newly printed
money, but the rules at that time wouldn’t allow them to do it. So they
did the next best thing.

The Fed chair at the time, Arthur Burns, called all the heads of the
federal reserve banks around the country and told them the to open the
discount window.

What that meant was that the next morning the largest banks in New
York would be able to borrow as much money as they needed so they could
in turn lend it to other commercial banks so they could in turn lend it
to Penn Central.

So the same banks that drove Penn Central into the ground were now
getting nearly free money from the Fed to loan to… essentially
themselves, to keep Penn alive

But you see, the banks weren’t interested in that deal, not unless
they could get some protection. They wanted the taxpayer to co-sign on
the loan to guarantee that in the event Penn failed, they would still
get their money.

And so the lobbying effort began. Executives from Penn, bankers, and
union representatives all went racing to Washington to explain how the
railroad was essential, not only to the public and the economy but to
national defense itself.

(Sound familiar? GM)

Congress, of course, reacted swiftly by retroactively ordering a
13.5% pay raise to all union employees which further strained Penn’s
balance sheet.

The next Congress passed the Emergency Rail Services Act, which authorized $125 million in federal loan guarantees.

None of this solved the problem, and none of it was designed to. It
was simply designed to give the banks a way to guarantee their loan
payments and ensure their future profits. In that context it succeeded
gloriously.

Penn Central was officially nationalized in 1971 and its name changed
Amtrak. Truth be told, the story of Amtrak is one of crony capitalism,
bank and government collusion and the fleecing of the American people.
In fact, we’re still being fleeced today.

Jason Stapleton

 

Start at 8:10  to 30:00 minutes

 

Reposted May 17, 2015 – KnowTheLies.com

 

Source

 

Source Article from http://www.knowthelies.com/node/10353

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