A look back…

Natixis SA is a large French corporate and investment bank that took a big ‘hit’ in the fall of 2008 when the massive Bernard Madoff $50 billion mega-fraud ponzi scheme blew up on it and a lot of other big ‘players’ in the world of global finance.

Natixis’ exposure in the Madoff fiasco was estimated at 450 million euros ($605 million).

Natixis had also during this time been riding the red-hot subprime bandwagon, and when the mortgage default wave steamrolled through, Natixis’ got walloped again.  Their write-downs topped out at $1.75B.

Natixis needed liquidity to survive, and the got it – courtesy of the U.S. Federal Reserve (and, indirectly, U.S. taxpaying citizens).
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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  –  Excerpts:
Natixis SA reported the biggest net losses of any French bank during the financial crisis and kept an outstanding balance of more than $10 billion of loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve for six months. The loans peaked on Dec. 22, 2008, when the Paris-based bank was borrowing $15.5 billion from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility and Term Auction Facility.

In February 2009, Natixis‘s main shareholders, Groupe Banque Populaire and Groupe Caisse d’Epargne, announced they would merge to form Groupe BPCE, and the French government bought about 3 billion euros ($4.25 billion) of preferred shares in the combined entity and 4 billion euros of subordinated debt. The deal closed in July 2009. Natixis paid off the last of its Fed loans in January 2010.

Peak amount of debt on 12/22/2008: $15.5B

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And so, here we have a large foreign bank getting sucked into some high-risk, speculative financial ventures, losing big…. and then getting bailed out by the Fed.

Natixis tapped the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility, Term Auction Facility and Discount Window for a cool $15.5B.

‘Thank you,’ U.S. taxpayers…

And now it is time for fair play.  U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than the same access to liquidity (it’s our money after all) that was so generously extended to Natixis, and many banking heavyweights… during their ‘time of need.’

The mechanism: A Federal Reserve Citizens Credit Facility.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2023 (5788 downloads)

p.s.  For the record, Société Générale’, BNP Paribas, HSBC, and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) were among other big banks with large exposure to the Madoff ponzi investments, along with massive exposure to subprime leveraged speculation – and also received Fed emergency loan funds (courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer).

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20774 downloads )

A Look back…

GE Capital, along with several other very large, well-heeled fiduciary entities was charged and convicted in a major municipal bond bid-rigging scandal in 2012. GE Capital had been shaking down municipalities across America, and screwing the pants off hard-working U.S. citizens. On a large scale.

Matt Taibbi, June 21, 2012: The Scam Wall Street Learned from the Mafia | Rolling Stone

“The state’s first witness, confusingly, was a CDR broker named Doug Goldberg… Right off the bat, in fact, Doug Goldberg explained that while at CDR, he had routinely helped the cream of Wall Street rig bids on municipal bonds by letting them take a peek at other bids:

Q: Who were some of the providers you gave last looks to?

A: There was a whole host of them, but GE Capital, FSA, J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Société Générale, Lehman Brothers, Bear. There were others.…
[snip]            

Goldberg went on to testify that he repeatedly rigged auctions with the three defendants. Sometimes he gave them “last looks” so they could shave basis points off their winning bids; other times he asked them to intentionally submit losing offers – called cover bids – to allow other firms to win. ,,,,. The broker went on to detail how he had worked with the GE executives to manipulate a number of auctions.
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Several short years prior to this monumental scam, U.S. taxpayers were helping bail GE Capital out of a financial hole, courtesy of generous Federal Reserve emergency lending initiatives.

Excerpts from Bloomberg report: Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 :
General Electric Co.’s GE Capital finance unit was the biggest U.S. issuer of commercial paper in 2008. GE, the world’s largest maker of jet engines and locomotives, turned to the Federal Reserve for emergency liquidity after the market for commercial paper — bonds with maturities of less than 270 days — froze in late 2008.

GE Capital, which had $91.8 billion of CP outstanding at the end of September 2008, borrowed from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility from October 2008 through February 2009, with a balance as high as $16.1 billion, data show. Initially, a GE spokesman said the company borrowed from the program “to demonstrate our support for what the Fed is doing.” In December, GE Treasurer Kathryn Cassidy said the company was using the CPFF “primarily as a liquidity backstop.” 

Peak amount of debt on 11/21/2008:  $16.1B

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If the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve can firehose liquidity out to companies like General Electric Co, in its time of need….

…then shouldn’t honest, hard-working U.S. citizens also be granted the same direct access to liquidity to restore financial health, across the board, to America’s working class, tax-paying U.S. citizens?

Answer: Yes they should.

Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

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A look back...

Bloomberg excerpts:
“As an insurer, American International Group Inc. didn’t qualify for the Federal Reserve’s crisis-lending programs for banks. So when trading partners squeezed AIG for liquidity in 2008, the Fed gave the New York-based company two credit lines all its own, with a combined borrowing capacity of $122.8 billion.

AIG’s balance under the credit lines reached about $90 billion in October 2008, data show. By then, the U.S. Treasury Department had taken over AIG, making about $70 billion of separate capital injections during the crisis.

In January 2009, the company borrowed $16.2 billion from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Bloomberg didn’t include the credit lines in its Fed-loan ranking because they weren’t available to a range of institutions and the borrower was never kept secret.

Peak amount of debt on 1/27/2009: $16.2B
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AIG FP (AIG Financial Products) raked in billions of dollars selling credit default swaps (CDS) during the housing boom. And they did not set aside adequate “reserves” to cover the potential of a hard down-turn in the market.

That hard down turn arrived when the housing bubble popped in 2007. And when the storm hit, AIG FP was sitting on $450 billion in CDS contracts. They could not ‘cover’ their counterparty obligations – to major fiduciary institutions like Goldman Sachs, Societe Generale, and many others.  And those counterparties did not adequately verify that AIG had the unwalled reserves necessary to cover their massive exposure.

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The Fed then stepped right up to the plate… to cover those obligations – 100 cents on the dollar.
Note: The Fed “gave the New York-based company [AIG] two credit lines all its own, with a combined borrowing capacity of $122.8 billion.”

It is now time for the Fed to step up to the plate and provide one new credit line, a Citizens Credit Facility, to American families (who, by the way, did not ‘roll the dice’ with leverage speculation like AIG and other major Wall Street players).

It is time for U.S. citizens to be granted the same direct access to liquidity extensions.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20765 downloads )

Washington Republicans are back at the table… with no politically feasible, economically credible plan to solve America’s ongoing, run-away budget deficit catastrophe — and put an end, once and for all, to these exasperating budget impasse episodes.

Main Street America Republicans do have a plan – a powerful deficit-eliminating, ‘hands-down’ election-winning plan.

……………………………………………

Republican Divisions Sink House Bill as Government Shutdown Nears – WSJ

Trump urges party to take hard line on election security in negotiations with Democrats

By Katy Stech Ferek | The Wall Street Journal  |  Updated Sept. 18, 2024 – Excerpt:

WASHINGTON—An initial proposal by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) to fund the government was voted down Wednesday, underscoring the divisions within the Republican Party but potentially setting the stage for talks with Democrats on avoiding a partial shutdown at the end of the month.

The vote on the short-term funding bill was 202 in favor to 220 against, with more than a dozen holdout Republicans joining most Democrats in opposition. Two Republicans voted present.

With the House GOP’s initial effort defeated, Johnson now must quickly decide his path forward. Some GOP figures, including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, are demanding that Republicans leverage the specter of a shutdown to strike a hard bargain with Democrats to tighten voter-ID rules, while others say such an effort would be futile and wrongheaded just ahead of the November elections.

Johnson’s initial proposal would have extended government funding levels for six months past the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year. The bill, known as a continuing resolution, also includes a provision that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship to register, nodding to an issue that is a priority for Trump and many Republican voters.

After the measure failed, Johnson said he was disappointed and was talking with Republican colleagues about his next steps. He didn’t provide details.

“Now we go back to the playbook. We’ll draw up another play, and we’ll come up with a solution,” he said. “We have time to fix the situation.”

“This bill is an admission that a House Republican majority cannot govern,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

__________________________________

The Main Street America Republican economic plan generates $112.6 billion budget surpluses annually, during the first five years of activation (2025-2029).

It restores financial security for millions of American families by eliminating massive amounts of Household Debt, re-incentivizing work and productivity, and minimizing government control over the daily lives of countless numbers of U.S. citizens.

It provides U.S. citizens with gold-plated reasons to elect Republicans across the board in election cycles for years to come.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20371 downloads )

A look back…

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011  Excerpts:

“Hudson Castle Group Inc., a firm started by former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executives, sponsored three asset-backed commercial paper conduits — investment vehicles that bought financial assets and raised money by selling short-term bonds. Such conduits were among “shadow banks” that “contributed significantly to asset bubbles” by converting “opaque, risky, long-term assets into money-like and seemingly riskless short-term liabilities,” according to a July 2010 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

On a combined basis, Hudson Castle’s three conduits had as much as $16.2 billion of outstanding loans from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility in March 2009. They included Belmont Funding LLC, Ebbets Funding LLC and Elysian Funding LLC.

Peak amount of debt on 3/31/2009: $16.2B

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Here we see the Fed providing emergency funding to bailout a company that had “contributed significantly to asset bubbles” by converting “opaque, risky, long-term assets into money-like and seemingly risk-less short-term liabilities.”

The Leviticus 25 Plan levels the playing field by restoring financial security for players who had ‘not’ contributed to asset bubbles” through “opaque, risky”carry-trade schemes, namely U.S. citizens.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20371 downloads )

A Look back…

Guggenheim Partners, LLC provides various forms of investment and financial services across the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Guggenheim ‘tapped’ some serious liquidity from the Federal Reserve during peak periods of the great financial crisis (2007-2010).

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Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 – Excerpts:

As chief executive officer of Bear Stearns Cos. in 2008, Alan Schwartz tapped the Federal Reserve for as much as $30 billion of emergency cash to float the New York-based brokerage until it could be acquired by JPMorgan Chase & Co.

By June 2009, he was CEO of closely held Guggenheim Partners LLC, whose special purpose financing affiliates borrowed as much as $16.4 billion from the Fed’s Commercial Paper Funding Facility. Liberty Hampshire Co., a Guggenheim unit, sponsored asset-backed commercial paper conduits, which removed mortgage securities and other assets from companies’ balance sheets and provided cheap financing. Such conduits were among “shadow banks” that helped inflate pre-crisis asset bubbles, according to a July 2010 Federal Reserve Bank of New York report.

Peak Amount of Debt on 12/10/2008: $16.4B
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Guggenheim Partners, LLC received their Fed liquidity transfusions through Commercial Paper Funding Facility, one of the many credit facilities created by the Fed to rescue companies that had rolled the dice with leveraged speculation – and lost.

These Fed’s liquidity transfusions come with a price. They represent a ‘draw’ on the purchasing power of the future earnings of millions of U.S. citizens.

U.S. citizens should receive nothing less than that same direct access to liquidity – through a U.S. Citizens’ Credit Facility, from the Fed.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20365 downloads )

A Look Back…

Société Générale S.A. (SocGen), the 3rd largest bank in France and 8th largest in Europe, hit some ‘speed bumps’ in 2008. They announced to the world on the 28th of January 2008 that one of their junior future traders had racked up a series of regrettable trading losses. And the company was ‘out’ a cool $7.2 billion.

At about this same time, wiser minds at SocGen were ‘chasing yield’ and loading the company up with Mortgage Backed Securities, including certain ‘cesspool grade’ MBS’s, packaged and pedaled by Goldman Sachs. They insured their mortgage-backed asset portfolio with billions of dollars worth of hedging in AIG ‘sewer-quality’ credit default swaps (CDS’s).

AIG, with no meaningful reserves, bled out quickly when the mortgage default wave ripped across America in 2007-08, and SocGen was staring up at an $11 billion loss.

The U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to ‘cover’ AIG’s counterparties (at 100 cents on the dollar), and SocGen promptly received (courtesy of U.S. taxpayers) $6.9B in CDS payments and $4.1B in collateral postings from AIG in March 2009.

On top of all that, the Fed aimed the “secret liquidity lifeline” water canon SocGen’s way and soaked them with an additional $17.4B.

And SocGen regained its ‘financial health’ by the end of 2010. Thanks to U.S. taxpayers.

……………………………………………………..

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 –

Excerpts: Societe Generale SA, which in January 2008 spooked investors by announcing a record 4.9 billion-euro ($7.2 billion) trading loss from unauthorized bets by a former trader, was one of the earliest borrowers from the U.S. Federal Reserve’s discount window during the crisis. On May 22, 2008, the Paris-based bank got $3.5 billion of loans from the window — 23 percent of the total outstanding for all banks on that date — in addition to $13.9 billion from the Term Auction Facility.

After Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s collapse in September 2008, Societe Generale received 1.7 billion euros of preferred shares and 1.7 billion euros of subordinated debt from the French government to bolster its capital and lending. The bank repaid the state funds in November 2009 after a rights offering.

Peak amount of [Fed-based] debt on 08/22/2008: $17.4B

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U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than to be granted access to the same direct liquidity flows that major U.S. and foreign banks received during the financial crisis of 2007-2010.

This access to liquidity would relieve debt burdens at ‘ground level’ in America, and restore ‘financial health’ to U.S. citizens.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20365 downloads )

Japanese Style Policies And The Future Of America

Aug 30, 2024 – Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com Charts/Excerpts:

…………………

The Failure Of Central Banks

“Bad debt is the root of the crisis. Fiscal stimulus may help economies for a couple of years but once the ‘painkilling’ effect wears off, U.S. and European economies will plunge back into crisis. The crisis won’t be over until the nonperforming assets are off the balance sheets of US and European banks.” – Keiichiro Kobayashi, 2010

Kobayashi will ultimately be proved correct. However, even he never envisioned the extent to which Central Banks globally would be willing to go. As my partner, Michael Lebowitz pointed out previously:

“Global central banks’ post-financial crisis monetary policies have collectively been more aggressive than anything witnessed in modern financial history. Over the last ten years, the six largest central banks have printed unprecedented amounts of money to purchase approximately $24 trillion of financial assets as shown below. Before the financial crisis of 2008, the only central bank printing money of any consequence was the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC).”

………..

Soaring U.S. debt, rising deficits, and demographics are the culprits behind the economy’s disinflationary push. The complexity of the current environment implies years of sub-par economic growth ahead. The Federal Reserve’s long-term economic projections remain at 2% or less.

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With the current [U.S.] economic recovery already pushing the long end of the economic cycle, the risk is rising that the next economic downturn is closer than not. The danger is that the Federal Reserve is now potentially trapped with an inability to use monetary policy tools to offset the subsequent economic decline when it occurs.

That is the same problem Japan has wrestled with for the last 25 years. While Japan has entered into an unprecedented stimulus program (on a relative basis twice as large as the U.S. on an economy 1/3 the size), there is no guarantee that such a program will result in the desired effect of pulling the Japanese economy out of its 40-year deflationary cycle. The problems that face Japan are similar to what we are currently witnessing in the U.S.:

• A decline in savings rates to extremely low levels which depletes productive investments
• An aging demographic that is top-heavy and drawing on social benefits at an advancing rate.
• A heavily indebted economy with debt/GDP ratios above 100%.
• A decline in exports due to a weak global economic environment.
• Slowing domestic economic growth rates.
• An underemployed younger demographic.
• An inelastic supply-demand curve
• Weak industrial production
• Dependence on productivity increases to offset reduced employment

The lynchpin to Japan and the U.S. remains demographics and interest rates. As the aging population grows and becomes a net drag on “savings,” dependency on the “social welfare net” will continue to expand. The “pension problem” is only the tip of the iceberg.

______________________________

Main Street Republicans have the plan to counter this deepening economic malaise.

This plan features: 1) Massive debt elimination (public/private); 2) Increased savings rates; 3) Free market economic revitalization and robust economic growth; 4) Restoration of economic liberty in America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20234 downloads )

A look back…

Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011 –  Excerpts:

As the U.K.’s biggest mortgage lender, Edinburgh-based HBOS Plc faced mounting losses in September 2008 on subprime home loans to people with poor credit histories, as well as on so-called Alt-A loans, which didn’t require borrowers to provide proof of income.

On Sept. 18, London-based Lloyds TSB Group Plc agreed to buy HBOS, and the U.K. government later injected 17 billion pounds ($27 billion) of capital into Lloyds to assure the deal closed.

The Federal Reserve helped, too. HBOS borrowed as much as $18 billion from the U.S. central bank in November 2008. Lloyds completed the takeover in January 2009 and kept using HBOS as a conduit to borrow from the Fed through February 2010.

Peak amount of debt on 11/20/2008: $18B

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Note: Lloyds Banking Group, Plc was later named as one of the banks involved in defrauding U.S. citizens and municipalities via LIBOR rate manipulation.

LIBOR rate-rigging defrauded U.S. mortgage holders via ARMs resets. It also burned municipalities across the U.S. billions out of dollars in municipal bond costs by artificially ‘tilting’ rates against the interest rate swaps that had been purchased by municipalities, such as Baltimore, to hedge the bonds. And it adversely affected the value of ‘swap lines’ that were held by several dozen U.S. banks.

Reuters reported on March 14, 2014 that the FDIC was suing 16 banks that it believed were involved in LIBOR rate-rigging: “The banks named as defendants include Bank of America Corp, Citigroup Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, HSBC Holdings PLC, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC.”

“Other defendants in the lawsuit included Rabobank, Lloyds Banking Group plc, Societe Generale, Norinchukin Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and WestLB AG.” Barclays and UBS had already settled.
……………………………………………..

Note: all of the named banks had received billions of dollars, during the height of the financial crisis, from the Fed’s “secret liquidity lifelines.”
Citigroup, peak amount received from Fed: $99.5B
Bank of America: $91.4B
RBS: $84.5B
Barclays $64.9B
The most recent bank to be implicated, and fined: Lloyd’s Banking Group, Plc, peak amount received from Fed during the financial crisis: $505M
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The very banks that received billions of dollars in bailout funds from the U.S. Federal Reserve were defrauding American families, state municipalities, and other U.S. financial institutions.
American families deserve nothing less than the same direct access to liquidity that these banks received, from various Federal Reserve credit facilities, and ultimately, U.S. taxpayers, during the great financial crisis.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20202 downloads )

A look back…

Dresdner Bank AG, ‘under water’ in subprime debt – Fed to the rescue…

 Notes from Bloomberg  Nov 28, 2011:     

German insurer Allianz SE put its Dresdner Bank AG unit up for sale in 2008 as subprime-mortgage losses mounted.

By the time Frankfurt-based Commerzbank AG agreed to buy Dresdner on Aug. 31, 2008, for 9.8 billion euros ($14.4 billion), Dresdner was borrowing $11 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

After the deal closed in January 2009 at a renegotiated price of 5.1 billion euros, Frankfurt-based Dresdner kept drawing from the Fed. The last of its loans from the U.S. central bank were repaid on July 16, 2009, more than six months after the Commerzbank deal closed.

Peak amount of debt on 7/02/2008: $18.4B

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The U.S. Federal Reserve was providing bail-out funds, through various credit facilities, to banking operations all across the globe during the height of the financial crisis.

Many of these banks created their own systemic toxicities, precipitating the financial crisis in the process – and U.S. taxpayers bailed them out.

The Leviticus 25 Plan provides the mechanism for a Citizens Credit Facility – to grant the same direct access to liquidity extensions that the Fed provided to scores of domestic and foreign financial institutions during the great financial crisis of 2007-2010.

The Leviticus 25 Plan will reignite the economy, re-incentivize work, reduce the heavy and unhealthy load dependence on government by the citizenry, provide for massive debt reduction at the family level, $583 billion annual Federal budget surpluses (2023-2027). And restore economic liberty in America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2025 (20202 downloads )