Central Banks Have Gone Rogue

Central Banks Have Put Us All At Risk

by Ellen Brown

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marcokalmann / Flickr
Excluding institutions such as Blackrock and Vanguard, which are composed of multiple investors, the largest single players in global equity markets are now thought to be central banks themselves. An estimated 30 to 40 central banks are invested in the stock market, either directly or through their investment vehicles (sovereign wealth funds). According to David Haggith at Zero Hedge:

Central banks buying stocks are effectively nationalizing U.S. corporations just to maintain the illusion that their “recovery” plan is working. … At first, their novel entry into the stock market was only intended to rescue imperiled corporations, such as General Motors during the first plunge into the Great Recession, but recently their efforts have shifted to propping up the entire stock market via major purchases of the most healthy companies on the market.
The U.S. Federal Reserve, which bailed out General Motors in a rescue operation in 2009, was prohibited from lending to individual companies under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, and it is legally barred from owning equities. It parks its reserves instead in bonds and other government-backed securities. But other countries have different rules, and central banks are now buying individual stocks as investments, with a preference for big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft. Those are the stocks that dominate the market, and central banks are aggressively driving up their value. Markets, including the U.S. stock market, are thus literally being rigged by foreign central banks.

The result, as noted in a January 2017 article at Zero Hedge, is that central bankers, “who create fiat money out of thin air and for whom ‘acquisition cost’ is a meaningless term, are increasingly nationalizing the equity capital markets.” Or at least they would be nationalizing equities, if they were actually “national” central banks. But the Swiss National Bank, the biggest single player in this game, is 48 percent privately owned, and most central banks have declared their independence from their governments. They march to the drums not of government but of private industry.

Marking the 10th anniversary of the 2008 collapse, former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson wrote in a Sept. 7 New York Times op-ed that the Fed’s tools needed to be broadened to allow it to fight the next anticipated economic crisis, including allowing it to prop up the stock market by buying individual stocks. To investors, propping up the stock market may seem like a good thing, but what happens when the central banks decide to sell? The Fed’s massive $4 trillion economic support is now being taken away, and other central banks are expected to follow. Their U.S. and global holdings are so large that their withdrawal from the market could trigger another global recession. That means when and how the economy will collapse is now in the hands of central bankers.

Moving Goal Posts

The two most aggressive central bank players in the equity markets are the Swiss National Bank and the Bank of Japan.  The goal of the Bank of Japan, which now owns 75 percent of Japanese exchange-traded funds, is evidently to stimulate growth and defy longstanding expectations of deflation. But the Swiss National Bank is acting more like a hedge fund, snatching up individual stocks because “that is where the money is.”

About 20 percent of the SNB’s reserves are in equities, and more than half of that is in U.S. equities. The SNB’s goal is said to be to counteract the global demand for Swiss francs, which has been driving up the value of the national currency, making it hard for Swiss companies to compete in international trade. The SNB does this by buying up other currencies, and because it needs to put them somewhere, it’s putting that money in stocks.

That is a reasonable explanation for the SNB’s actions, but some critics suspect it has ulterior motives. Switzerland is home to the Bank for International Settlements, the “central bankers’ bank” in Basel, where central bankers meet regularly behind closed doors. Dr. Carroll Quigley, a Georgetown history professor who claimed to be the historian of the international bankers, wrote of this institution in” Tragedy and Hope” in 1966:

[T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.  This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks, which were themselves private corporations.
The key to their success, said Quigley, was that they would control and manipulate the money system of a nation while letting it appear to be controlled by the government. The economic and political systems of nations would be controlled not by citizens but by bankers, for the benefit of bankers. The goal was to establish an independent (privately owned or controlled) central bank in every country. Today, that goal has largely been achieved.

In a paper presented at the 14th Rhodes Forum in Greece in October 2016, Dr. Richard Werner, director of international development at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, argued that central banks have managed to achieve total independence from government and total lack of accountability to the people, and that they are now in the process of consolidating their powers. They control markets by creating bubbles, busts and economic chaos. He pointed to the European Central Bank, which was modeled on the disastrous earlier German central bank, the Reichsbank. The Reichsbank created deflation, hyperinflation and the chaos that helped bring Adolf Hitler to power.

The problem with the Reichsbank, said Werner, was its excessive independence and its lack of accountability to German institutions and Parliament. The founders of postwar Germany changed the new central bank’s status by significantly curtailing its independence. Werner wrote, “The Bundesbank was made accountable and subordinated to Parliament, as one would expect in a democracy. It became probably the world’s most successful central bank.”

But today’s central banks, he said, are following the disastrous Reichsbank model, involving an unprecedented concentration of power without accountability. Central banks are not held responsible for their massive policy mistakes and reckless creation of boom-bust cycles, banking crises and large-scale unemployment. Youth unemployment now exceeds 50 percent in Spain and Greece. Many central banks remain in private hands, including not only the Swiss National Bank but the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Italian, Greek and South African central banks.

Banks and Central Banks Should Be Made Public Utilities

Werner’s proposed solution to this dangerous situation is to bypass both the central banks and the big international banks and decentralize power by creating and supporting local not-for-profit public banks. Ultimately, he envisions a system of local public money issued by local authorities as receipts for services rendered to the local community. Legally, he noted, 97 percent of the money supply is already just private company credit, which can be created by any company, with or without a banking license. Governments should stop issuing government bonds, he said, and instead fund their public sector credit needs through domestic banks that create money on their books (as all banks have the power to do). These banks could offer more competitive rates than the bond markets and could stimulate the local economy with injections of new money. They could also put the big bond underwriting firms that feed on the national debt out of business.

Abolishing the central banks is one possibility, but if they were recaptured as public utilities, they could serve some useful purposes. A central bank dedicated to the service of the public could act as an unlimited source of liquidity for a system of public banks, eliminating bank runs since the central bank cannot go bankrupt. It could also fix the looming problem of an unrepayable federal debt, and it could generate “quantitative easing for the people,” which could be used to fund infrastructure, low-interest loans to cities and states, and other public services.

The ability to nationalize companies by buying them with money created on the central bank’s books could also be a useful public tool. The next time the mega-banks collapse, rather than bailing them out, they could be nationalized and their debts paid off with central bank-generated money.

There are other possibilities. Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts argues that we should also nationalize the media and the armaments industry. Researchers at the Democracy Collaborative have suggested nationalizing the large fossil fuel companies by simply purchasing them with Fed-generated funds. In a September 2018 policy paper titled “Taking Climate Action to the Next Level,” the researchers wrote, “This action might represent our best chance to gain time and unlock a rapid but orderly energy transition, where wealth and benefits are no longer centralized in growth-oriented, undemocratic, and ethically dubious corporations, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron.”

Critics will say this would result in hyperinflation, but an argument can be made that it wouldn’t. That argument will have to wait for another article, but the point here is that massive central bank interventions that were thought to be impossible in the 20th century are now being implemented in the 21st, and they are being done by independent central banks controlled by an international banking cartel. It is time to curb central bank independence. If their powerful tools are going to be put to work, it should be in the service of the public and the economy.

 

Transnational Plutocrats Behind JPMorgan Chase

Behind the Scenes at JP Morgan Is An Army of Plutocrats from the Global Elite: Bilderbergers, CFR, Trilateralists, Henry Kissinger, World Economic Forum, Group of 30, Industrialists, Oil men and Billionaires from around the World Control the 4 Trillion Dollar Bank Operations

Occupy.com’s report on the Banking Influence by Andrew Gavin Marshall Exposes the Globalist Powers Infesting the Bank.

Global Power Project, Part 4: Banking on Influence with JPMorgan ChaseWed, 7/3/2013 – by Andrew Gavin Marshall

In May, JPMorgan Chase was listed as the largest bank in the world with assets at roughly $4 trillion — some $1.53 trillion of it in derivatives. This was reported a month after the announcement that the bank had posted a record first-quarter profit of $6.5 billion.

Jamie Dimon, the bank’s CEO and Chairman, has faced a host of scandals in relation to his management of the megabank, including the loss of roughly $6 billion through the London branch of the bank — losses that Dimon was accused of hiding. A 300-page report by the U.S. Senate, investigating the “creative accounting” of JPMorgan, noted that the bank “hid losses, did not share information with its regulators, and misled the public” in what one banking regulator referred to as “make believe voodoo magic.” Stated bluntly in The New York Times, JPMorgan Chase, the largest derivatives dealer in the world, “is too big to regulate.”

In the midst of the scandal, the bank faced a potential “revolt” of its shareholders in a bid to strip Dimon of his dual role as CEO and Chairman. In confidential government reports which were leaked to The New York Times, the bank was accused of “manipulative schemes” which transformed “money-losing power plants into powerful profit centers” while executives made “false and misleading statements” under oath.

Yet even in the midst of scandal, Jamie Dimon was praised in a storm of support by billionaires, corporate kingpins and media barons. Calling JPMorgan Chase “as good a bank as there is,” New York City mayor and billionaire media baron Michael Bloomberg went on to call Dimon “a very smart, honest, great executive.” News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch praised Dimon as “one of the smartest, toughest guys around,” while Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, referred to him as a “great leader” and said he had earned the “right to hold both Chairman and CEO titles.” To top it off, billionaire investor and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, dubbed Dimon “a fabulous banker.”

And the adoration goes all the way to the top rung. In 2009, The New York Times referred to Jamie Dimon as “President Obama’s favorite banker.” In 2010, Obama told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that he didn’t “begrudge” bank CEOs like Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs for their massive bonuses of $17 and $9 million, respectively. Obama explained: “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.” The president added, “I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen.”

In May of 2012, Obama rushed to Jamie Dimon’s defense in light of the financial scandals, stating that Dimon was “one of the smartest bankers we got.” The Financial Times referred to Dimon as “the last king of Wall Street.” And when finally faced with the decision to strip Dimon of his dual role as chairman and CEO, Obama’s “favorite banker” ended up winning “a decisive victory” by maintaining both his roles.

But this is just the surface of JPMorgan Chase’s financial manipulations. The bank, in fact, was at the forefront of creating Credit Default Swaps (CDS), a key aspect of the derivatives market that led to the inflation and subsequent blowout of the housing bubble. JPMorgan developed these “financial instruments” as a type of insurance policy in 1994, allowing the bank to trade its debt (in the form of loans to corporations and governments) to third parties, thus handing off the risk and removing the debts from its accounts, which allowed it to make further loans. JPMorgan opened up the first CDS desk in New York in 1997, “a division that would eventually earn the name the Morgan Mafia for the number of former members who went on to senior positions at global banks and hedge funds.” Back in 2003, the same Warren Buffet who would later praise Dimon referred to credit default swaps as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”

JPMorgan was also at the forefront in the United States pushing for financial deregulation, particularly the slow-motion dismantling of the Glass-Steagall Act that had been put in place in 1933 in response to the financial speculation which had helped spark the Great Depression. After hearing proposals from banks such as Citicorp, JP Morgan and Bankers Trust, which advocated the loosening of “restrictions” put in place by Glass-Steagall, the Federal Reserve Board in 1987 voted to ease many of the regulations. That same year, Alan Greenspan, who had previously been a director of JP Morgan, became the chairman of the Fed. In 1989, the Fed approved an application submitted by JP Morgan, Chase Manhattan, Citicorp and Bankers Trust to further reduce the regulations imposed by Glass-Steagall. In 1990, JP Morgan became “the first bank to receive permission from the Federal Reserve to underwrite securities.”

Financial deregulation accelerated under President Clinton, much to the delight of Wall Street banks, which were then permitted to merge into megabanks, with JPMorgan merging with Chase Manhattan to form JPMorgan Chase. As early as 2006 and 2007, multiple megabanks were beginning to bet against the housing market through various hedge funds, allowing them to make profits on the housing collapse they created. JPMorgan continued to sell mortgages as it bet against the mortgage market, passing on the risk while it hedged its bets to profit from the failure and losses of others. In 2011, the bank paid a $153 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle allegations of “securities fraud.”

In the midst of the financial crisis in 2008, JPMorgan Chase became not only a major criminal, but also a prime beneficiary. In 2007, the global investment bank Bear Stearns was named by Fortune magazine as the second “most admired” financial securities company in the United States, while Lehman Brothers was put in first place. As the financial crisis erupted, Bear Stearns executives “discovered” that they were “nearly out of cash” in March of 2008. The CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Schwartz, made a phone call to Jamie Dimon — JPMorgan Chase was the clearing agent for Bear Stearns — asking for an overnight loan. Dimon, who also sat on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, turned there instead of providing the loan through his own bank. The president of the New York Fed – who was elected by the banks that own the New York Fed – was Timothy Geithner. Geithner began discussions with Bear Stearns, and the following morning he held a meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, where they agreed to an emergency loan for Bear Stearns, providing the funds through JPMorgan Chase.

Read Full Article here

 

Banking: thousands of customers switch their accounts out of the big five

Building societies, credit unions and co-operatives benefit as anger over scandals turns to action

FULL STORY HERE

The Co-operative bank has seen the number of people switching to its current accounts jump by 43% over the past year. Photograph: Ian Dagnall/Alamy

Consumers are deserting major high-street banks in unprecedented numbers after a slew of revelations about unethical behaviour, according to data from the Move Your Money campaign.

Building societies, credit unions and co-operatives have all reported a sharp rise in new business over the past 12 months as the reputation of the major banks has taken a hammering.

Laura Willoughby, Move Your Money’s chief executive, said: “Anger with the banks is turning into action. This year British banks have been exposed for exploiting their customers, starving the economy of credit and flouting the law.”

Credit unions – small, usually locally based savings groups – have attracted almost 20,000 new accounts in the past six months, according to Move Your Money, while ethical banks Triodos, Ecology and the Charity Bank have all reported a jump in customers.

Building societies saw 78,000 customers sign up for savings accounts in the third quarter alone after Barclays was implicated in the Libor-fixing scandal, which has spread to engulf several other banks.

“Customers are clearly far more interested now in the way financial services companies are run,” said a spokeswoman for the Building Societies Association. “Putting that into the mix alongside interest rates and service has been positive for mutuals like building societies.”

The Co-operative bank, which will treble the size of its network next year when it takes over 632 Lloyds branches, has seen the number of people switching to its current accounts jump by 43% over the past year.

Move Your Money urges savers to shift their accounts from the so-called big five – Barclays, HSBC, Santander, Lloyds Banking Group and RBS – to ethical or mutually owned alternatives.

The government has sought to boost competition in the banking market as a way of improving the performance of the big players. Business secretary Vince Cable said: “One of the biggest things is competition: getting new banks in to challenge the others.”

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP chairing the parliamentary commission on banking standards, said last week: “The latest revelations of collusion, corruption and market-rigging beggar belief”.

…snip

Seize The Banks!

The Myth of Democracy and the Rule of the Banks

A talk by Richard Becker from the PSLIn this video presentation filmed by Support Credit Unions.com.  Mr. Richard Becker discusses his new pamphlet on the Rule of the Banks. He outlines the entire situation of the 2008 financial collapse, how it was caused, the billions in bailout money given to these banks and the trillions more in “guarantees”.  So what happened to all that money?  Why are we still mired in unemployment and poverty?  Mr. Becker exposes the criminal activities of these banks, like Wachovia laundering 378 billion dollars for the Mexican drug cartels, the banks foreclosing on millions of homeowners while they have packaged their mortgages into derivative bundles and made billions of dollars on this huge real estate scam.  Mr. Becker follows the money and exposes the greed of the government supported capitalist system wreaking havoc on the people.

Click to Watch Video Now.  (Continue watching after end titles to see the great “Occupy” music video.)

Click here to visit the PSL website

 

 

 

Domain Name Games Part 3 Just Published

Part 3 of Domain Name Games has now been published.  Go to Domain Name Games on the Main Menu bar, and select Part 3.

Or click here:

The California Credit Union Domain Story Unfolds Into The Internet Void.

Once again a major Credit Union has failed to secure its name and all aspects of the name, suffering among other things, an invisible assault by the Internet Buccaneers. High weirdness as the trail of the Internet Buccaneers leads to the Hermit Kingdom.

The Internet Buccaneers Discover California Credit Union – Strange Connections Revealed – LATU Names Grabbed Up – More Names Go South and East – The Strange Case of the Reverse Hijacking – The View From the 16th Floor Must Be Exhilarating – The Four Clues – The Vanished Galleons of the Internet Buccaneers – Should Credit Unions Read The The Good Book?

Coming Soon – Domain Name Games Part 3

Coming Soon!

Domain Name Games – Part 3

The California Credit Union Domain Story Unfolds Into The Internet Void.

Once again a major Credit Union has failed to secure its name and all aspects of the name, suffering among other things, an invisible assault by the Internet Buccaneers. High weirdness as the trail of the Internet Buccaneers leads to the Hermit Kingdom.

More Icelandic bankers arrested

Link here:

more-icelandic-bankers-arrested

More Icelandic bankers arrested

 

Iceland’s special prosecutor into the banking crisis has confirmed that raids have taken place today and that arrests have been made. The Central Bank of Iceland is among the institutions under investigation.

Special Prosecutor, Olafur Thor Hauksson told Visir.is that house searches are taking place in at least three places today as part of investigations into the central bank, MP Bank and Straumur Bank.

Stefan Johann Stefansson at the central bank confirmed that agents were in the building conducting searches; and it has also been confirmed that searches are underway at MP Bank and ALMC (formerly Straumur).

An ALMC spokesman said that the premises are indeed being searched and that the bank’s staff members are doing their best to help.

In other news, four people have so far been arrested today in connection with the special prosecutor’s investigation into Landsbanki.

One of the arrested parties is Jon Thorsteinn Oddleifsson, former Landsbanki treasury boss; and it is not yet known who the other three are.

According to Visir.is sources, the arrests concern a brand new section of the wider case against the bank and are not directly connected to searches and arrests made last week.

 

 

 

 

Lockheed FCU’s Trademarks Go Nowhere

Lockheed FCU’s Trademarks Go Nowhere – Not Linked To Domain Names

A previous 2 part article entitled Domain Name Games (on supportcreditunions.com) pointed out that a mantra of internet name guru Big Jim says that it is important to link your trademarks to domain names. The trademarks, properly tied to domain names, works with your website, sending customers directly to your website without the possibility of them getting directed elsewhere. Failure to do this leads to situations where your customers and potential customers, who are trying to find you by searching for one of your trademarked names, get sent to other websites of the same name or similar name. People who get confused in this mass of internet names can easily give up. Everyone is in a big hurry these days, time is precious. How many times have you heard someone just say “screw it, it’s too much hassle” when looking for something on the internet? We have all felt that way one time or another. So making it easy for your customers should be a number one priority.

 

A search for trademarks for Lockheed Federal Credit Union (hereafter referred to as LFCU) turns up eight records. Taking a look at the trademarks shows that LFCU has missed the boat on most of these, making it harder for customers and potential customers to find them. This includes their new name, which will be launched in July of 2012. Let’s take a look at the trademark names in detail and see what the situation is.

 

The first name is a trademark for “Logix Smarter Banking”. I can’t reproduce the pictorials on these, but you can search google for the trademark visual and check out the designs yourself (www.trademarkia.com is a great tool for this. The company that provides this is LegalForce Trademarkia) The filing date for this trademark is recent, 5-30-2012, by LFCU’s excellent and professional trademark agents in Seattle. However, when you try to find a connected website for this, www.logixsmarterbanking.com, you go to a holding page at Domains By Proxy, which is a company owned by godaddy founder Bob Parsons. This company, Domains By Proxy, will hold the domain name owner in “secret”, hidden behind a wall of security. So who owns LogixSmarterBanking.com? Maybe Lockheed (LFCU) owns it in secret? But if they do, why not just re-direct the inquiries to their lfcu.com website? The guess is that LFCU does not own it. Since this looks to be their main logo for their new name, not owning the domain could cause a lot of confusion for their customers. A recent check shows that LFCU has obtained the name LogixBanking.com, which re-directs inquiries to their lfcu.com website. A step in the right direction on a long, confusing road. But without the words “credit union” attached, it looks like “Logix” is just another bank.

 

Next on the list is their trademark called Altis. This is under the category of Insurance and Financial Services, and listed as credit union services, loans, etc. This is a nice strong-sounding name, and was filed on 12-28-2011. Unfortunately, searching www.altis.com does not take you to LFCU, but instead to a company in Australia that is engaged in consulting, information dashboard design, data warehousing, business intelligence, and other web activities. The main IP for this company is in the states, in Sunneyvale, CA., but the company is in Sydney, NSW, the Land of Oz. They have had this great name since March 22, 1996. For a potential LFCU customer seeing the logo and trying to get to lfcu.com, this is a dead-end road, so to speak.

 

Third is another great sounding name that LFCU came up with: Aviance. This was filed on December 28, 2011, the same date they filed for Altis. The category for this is also Insurance and Financial Services, and states that it is for credit union services, loans, on-line banking, and more. If you try to find LFCU through this website, www.aviance.com, you are taken to a large airport services company. This company, Aviance, says that it is “the first ever alliance of airport services providers in the world. The alliance was created in 1999 to provide carriers with a co-operative alternative to the global handlers. The website is registered to a company in Istanbul, Turkey, and the IP server is somewhere near Kayseri, Turkey. The website seems to date from April 28, 2004, years before LFCU filed for the Aviance trademark. So once again, LFCU’s trademark does not match an internet domain. The latest look at the trademark information shows that a letter of suspension was mailed to LFCU on March 30, 2012. Possibly they are dropping this trademark, or are behind in filing some paperwork?

 

The fourth trademark is Logix Federal. The filing date for this trademark is given as September 2, 2011, before they filed for either Altis or Aviance. LFCU’s marketing folks must have been on full tilt that last quarter of 2011. The associated domains would be logixfederal.com and logixfederal.org. Both of these domain names are being held by Domains By Proxy, with the true owners shielded from view. Both were created in mid September, 2011, right after LFCU filed for the trademark, so the question is: if LFCU owns these domains why let them go to a dead end holding page at Domains By Proxy? Why not have them re-directed to the main LFCU web address of lfcu.com? Maybe these websites are not owned by LFCU, possibly a domain broker like Big Jim is scanning the trademark applications every day for opportunities. Perhaps one of the internet buccaneers has snagged it. At the moment, it’s a mystery. The domain name game can be a high-stakes game, with stacks of cash on the table, and many operators are scanning the business news looking for just such opportunities.

 

The fifth trademark to be discussed is Logix. This was also filed on September 2, 2011, a busy time at LFCU. This is also stated to be Insurance, financial services, and credit union activities. This is their most important trademark, as LFCU has announced that Lockheed FCU is changing its name to Logix FCU, so “Logix” will become the main name in July, 2012. “We are proud to announce that LFCU will soon become Logix.” they state on their website. As far as being able to get the domain name for this, the great name logix.com, the chances are about as great as becoming the King of England. Logix.com is owned by Logix, a very old communications company, that has its roots in the great breakup of AT&T, and the founding of American Telco in 1983. This is a major telecommunications company, with over 12,000 customers, based in Houston, Texas. The main IP server is in Oklahoma City. LFCU has made a major mistake in picking a name that they can never have as a domain .com. Think of the large amounts of money LFCU will be spending on this name change, legal, signage, letterheads, advertising, trademarks, etc. And after all that, when someone driving down the street spots the name Logix on the side of a building and searches on an Iphone or computer for logix.com, it will show up as the great Logix of Houston, TX, a large telecommunications company, not as LFCU. (There are alternatives of this that can still be pursued, such as a name that has “Logix” in it, that is a strong-sounding name that can be trademarked and also get the .com and other extensions that go with it. It’s never too late for this.) Meanwhile, what would Big Jim, the domain name whiz, say about this? I’m not asking, as the verbiage would too colorful for this article, and I have no reason to upset him, because ballistic he would go, and mere mortals like myself would have to run and hide. You get the idea.

 

But while we are on the logix domain subject, what about logic.org? That is at least in the ballpark, and something that LFCU should own. The current registrant of this domain is one Chris Nielsen from Minneapolis, MN, but the domain is hosted on a site in Germany. Is Mr. Nielsen a domain broker? Or is he acting on behalf of someone in Germany? It was created on January 1, 2011, months before LFCU filed for their Logix trademark in the fourth quarter of 2011. This great name is stated on one site to be for sale. Why LFCU did not grab this right away when they filed for their trademark is puzzling, to say the least. But this is still possible as of this writing.

 

The sixth trademark is another, older version of Logix Smarter Banking. This is the same name as the first trademark discussed, but the artwork on the name is not as fancy as the more recent one. This earlier rendition of the name was filed on September 2, 2011, along with Logix Federal and Logix, a busy time for the LFCU’s trademark agent. It was also stated to be in credit union activities and financial services. As stated before, the names logixsmarterbanking.com and .org both go to a Domains By Proxy holding page.

 

The seventh trademark on the list is more of a slogan than a logo. It is: “It Pays To Be A Member”. This was filed back on March 3, 2004, and classed as the usual insurance and financial affairs. The domain name itpaystobeamember.com is registered to something called Industrial Credit Union of Bellingham, WA, and was created in May 13, 2009. It goes to a link page type of website. The IP server is located in NY. Checking out itpaystobeamember.org, it was created on July 27, 2011, and if you type this in to your browser it will take you to something called The Indiana Farm Bureau. LFCU’s trademark was years before either of these domains. Their failure to grab both the .com and .org for ItPaysToBeAMember is baffling, they could have easily owned these for chump change, and redirected visitors to the lfcu.com site.

 

The last trademark on the list is another that is more of a slogan type, although a strong, good one: MyMoneyManager. This would also be a powerful .com name. It was filed on January 29, 2002. Currently mymoneymanager.com goes to a website called Ferguson Asset Management, Inc, an independent money management firm and registered investment adviser. They filed for this on September 1, 1998, years before Lockheed filed for their trademark. As for the other extension for this, the mymoneymanager.org, it is registered to a UK firm, Energy Internet Group. This was created on March 23, 2012, very recently, and typing in the domain goes to a link page with financial links. LFCU could have had this name years ago. The latest information on this trademark is that no statement of use was filed, and this great name was abandoned by LFCU on June 18, 2003.

 

As internet name guru Big Jim says, trademarks should be connected to domain names in all the possibilities that can be thought of, with every .com, .org, .net and dot everything. This study of LFCU’s trademarks can be a lesson learned for other credit unions, as well as for LFCU. Link the domains for your trademarks back to your main website. But first you have to obtain those domains, something that LFCU has often failed to do.