Genuine property ownership is now in the hands of the global elite: bankers, brokers and custodians who hold securities for brokers or banks. Most working-class Americans only “own” contractual rights with their brokers. And most have no idea.

Before closing your eyes for the night, you take one last glance at your Robinhood stock-watching app and your 401(k) account. They’re performing nicely. You’ve been fairly frugal since the economic downturn, and you’ve made your best-informed investments. It’s paying off. Smiling, you drift to sleep.

You wake up in the morning and log back in. To your terror, your stocks and bonds have all disappeared. Every last penny. You’ve withdrawn nothing and you’ve sold nothing, yet your account balance reads $0. How could this be?

This scenario is entirely possible under current law in the event of a financial crisis. You have one stealthy, radical, anti-freedom and anti-individual liberties group to thank. The group operates in shadowy corners, quietly convincing state governments to pass laws against the wellbeing of ordinary people. You’ve probably never even heard of them.

This group is the Uniform Law Commission (ULC).

“The ULC promotes states autonomy by providing a process for state governments to collaborate on issues where uniformity of law is necessary but federal oversight is not,” the commission claims. “Established in 1892, [the ULC] provides states with non-partisan, well-conceived and well-drafted legislation that brings clarity and stability to critical areas of state statutory law.”

The ULC works closely with state governments across the country to get states to agree to pass uniform laws, bypassing the federal government’s involvement and negating law and individual differences between states. 

The commission has certainly proposed beneficial acts, which were then adopted by state governments, in the past. A couple of these good-for-society acts include the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, which has enabled organ and tissue transplants since the 1960s, and the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act and the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, which have provided protections and guidance in support and custody issues.

However, in the 1990s, the ULC turned down a sinister, financially and politically motivated path. The switch occurred when the commission decided to amend Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Article 8.

The revised UCC tremendously reduced property rights of the individual by “changing rules governing the ownership and management of securities,” The Federalist pointed out. 

This new form of “property rights” was called a “security entitlement.”

Under the amended UCC, “securities entitlements,” or underlying stocks, bonds, 401(k) retirement accounts, IRAs, exchange-traded funds, and other popular investments, are no longer owned by the individual purchaser. 

Instead, genuine ownership is now in the hands of the global elite: bankers, brokers and custodians who hold securities for brokers or banks. Most working-class Americans only “own” contractual rights with their brokers. And most have no idea.

“Under this model, brokers and banks were able to take their clients’ investments, pool them together, and then take advantage of those investments by including them in their financial arrangements. This has empowered Wall Street and financial institutions to profit substantially from their clients’ wealth, all without most people having any idea how their investments are being used,” The Federalist reported.

The ULC persuaded lawmakers in every single state to adopt this revised UCC. Further, the commission convinced lawmakers to agree to alterations which ensured that if a broker went bankrupt, their own would be cared for. Brokers and financial institutions could collect payment on their debts, while individual investors (or ordinary Americans) and pensions were “effectively pushed to the back of line.”

Essentially, the ULC lobbied hard to ensure that Wall Street, big businesses and the global elite are prioritized in the event of an economic crash. In their wake, they will leave everyone else- you, me, and other ordinary Americans. They will be first in the line to collect payments, and we will be first in grave danger. 

“Here is some background for context. Over the past few years, the world’s largest financial institutions, those often referred to as ‘too big to fail,’ have been quietly preparing for a potential global financial crisis,” The Heartland Institute noted in a recent article.

“One of the ways in which they have done this is by lobbying legislators to change the way collateral is held under state laws, to reposition banks to have priority claim over the wealth stored in investments, 401(k), and IRA accounts. The result of their efforts is that Article 8 of the UCC effectively nullifies citizens’ fundamental property rights over their investments.”

Current law and contracts indicate that if a person orders shares in a company, these shares do not constitute ownership. Instead, the broker (or banker, or custodian) would “add” the shares to their account, but all that person would actually own is a “security entitlement” to the shares. This security entitlement is a contractual agreement granting rights to the shares, and it is not ownership of the shares themselves. 

True ownership and security entitlement are starkly and detrimentally different concepts. 

Former financial industry professor with experience in managing public equities, venture investing and hedge funds, David Rogers Webb, recently authored the groundbreaking title The Great Taking. The following paragraphs are an excerpt from his book.

“There are now no property rights to securities held in book-entry form in any jurisdiction, globally. In the grand scheme to confiscate all collateral, dematerialization of securities was the essential first step. The planning and efforts began over half a century ago. That there was some great strategic purpose behind dematerialization is evidenced by the fact that the CIA was assigned the mission.

The greatest subjugation in world history will have been made possible by the invention of a construct; a subterfuge; a lie: the ‘Security Entitlement.’

Since their beginnings more than four centuries ago, tradable financial instruments were recognized under law everywhere as personal property (perhaps that is why they were called ‘securities’). It may come as a shock to you that this is no longer the case.

In order to convey to you what has been done, let me start with an analogy:

Let’s say that you have purchased an automobile for cash. Having no debt against the vehicle, you believe that you now own it outright. Despite that, the auto dealer has been allowed by a newly invented legal concept to treat your car as his asset, and to use it as collateral to borrow money for his own purposes. Now the auto dealer has become bankrupt, and your vehicle along with all of the others sold by the dealer are seized by certain secured creditors of the dealership, with no judicial review being necessary, as legal certainty was previously established that they have absolute power to take your car in the event of the bankruptcy of the dealer.

Now, to be clear, I am not talking about your car! I am illustrating the horror and simplicity of the lie: You are led to believe that you own something, but someone else secretly controls it as collateral. And they have now established legal certainty that they have absolute power to take it immediately in the event of insolvency, and not your insolvency, but insolvency of the people who secretly gave them your property as collateral. It does not seem possible. But that is exactly what has been done with all tradable financial instruments, globally! The proof of this is absolutely irrefutable. This is wired to go now.

Essentially all securities ‘owned’ by the public in custodial accounts, pension plans and investment funds are now encumbered as collateral underpinning the derivatives complex, which is so large-an order of magnitude greater than the entire global economy- that there is not enough of anything in the world to back it. The illusion of collateral backing is facilitated by a daisy chain of hypothecation and rehypothecation in which the same underlying client collateral is reused many times over by a series of secured creditors. And so it is these creditors, who understand this system, who have demanded even more access to client assets as collateral.”