tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50904411921010882272024-03-05T23:46:51.644-06:00Moral Philosophy and Current EventsA blog which is dedicated to the use of Traditional (Aristotelian/Thomistic) moral reasoning in the analysis of current
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--Dr. J. P. HubertDr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.comBlogger826125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-47791210468841498262011-11-18T10:41:00.000-06:002011-11-18T10:41:31.003-06:001 Through 30 – The Coming U.S. Financial Crisis By The Numbers<strong><a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/1-through-30-the-coming-u-s-financial-crisis-by-the-numbers">The American Dream</a></strong><br />
Friday, November 18, 2011<br />
The United States is drowning in a sea of red ink from coast to coast and most Americans have absolutely no idea what is about to happen. Hopefully you have started to prepare for the coming U.S. financial crisis. If not, hopefully this article will be a wake up call for you.<br />
<div class="caption right"><img alt="" height="200" src="http://www.american.com/archive/2008/october-10-08/panics-and-politics/FeaturedImage" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;" title="Gold" width="320" /><br />
<strong></strong></div>Right now, governments all over Europe are on the verge of financial implosion. Most Americans aren’t paying much attention to that, but they should be, because what is happening to Greece and Italy right now will eventually be happening here. Just recently, the U.S. national debt passed the 15 trillion dollar mark. State and local government debt is also at record levels. Tens of millions of American families are in debt up to their eyeballs, and millions more Americans fell into poverty last year. Meanwhile, the “too big to fail” banks just keep getting larger and the Federal Reserve continues to inflate the debt bubble. At some point this debt bubble is going to burst, and when it does it is going to unleash financial hell all over America.<br />
Below you will find a list of numbers – 1 through 30. For each number, a statistic has been chosen that demonstrates the financial nightmare that the United States is facing. It is simply not possible to rack up debt at staggering rates forever. At some point the debt spiral is going to stop.<br />
A lot of politicians are claiming that they can stop the coming financial crisis from happening. But the truth is that unless our entire financial system is fundamentally transformed, nothing is going to be able to stop the financial nightmare that is headed our way.<br />
Unfortunately, the vast majority of our politicians still believe that the current financial system can be fixed and the vast majority of them still fully support the Federal Reserve.<br />
That is going to prove to be a gigantic mistake. The following are 30 facts that show that the United States is heading directly for a massive financial crisis….<br />
<strong>1</strong> – For fiscal year 2011, the U.S. federal government had a budget deficit of<a href="http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201110141417dowjonesdjonline000481&title=us-runs-1299-trillion-budget-deficit-in-fiscal-2011" target="_blank" title="nearly 1.3 trillion dollars">nearly 1.3 trillion dollars</a>. That was the third year in a row that our budget deficit has topped one trillion dollars.<br />
<strong>2</strong> – The balance sheet of the Federal Reserve has been ballooning like crazy. At this point, the Federal Reserve has very little capital backing a balance sheet that is<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/next-financial-crisis-hellish-way-204303737.html" target="_blank" title="well over 2 trillion dollars">well over 2 trillion dollars</a>.<br />
The following is how <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/next-financial-crisis-hellish-way-204303737.html" target="_blank" title="Michael Pento of Euro Pacific Capital">Michael Pento of Euro Pacific Capital</a> describes the situation that the Fed is in….<br />
<blockquote><em>Today, the Fed has $52.5 billion of capital backing a $2.7 trillion balance sheet.</em><br />
<em>Prior to the bursting of the credit bubble, the public was shocked to learn that our biggest investment banks were levered 30-to-1. When asset values fell, those banks were quickly wiped out. But now the Fed is holding many of the same types of assets and is levered 51-to-1! If the value of their portfolio were to fall by just 2%, the Fed itself would be wiped out.</em></blockquote><strong>3</strong> – It is being estimated that it would take a total of <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/europe-is-screwed-and-theres-only-one-way-out-2011-11" target="_blank" title="3 trillion euros">3 trillion euros</a> to bail out all of the countries in Europe that are in imminent danger of financial implosion. Europe is heading for a gigantic financial crisis, and when it happens the United States is going to be dragged down as well.<br />
<strong>4</strong> – As the U.S. economy continues to decline, millions of American families are having a very hard time feeding themselves. Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html" target="_blank" title="one out of every four">one out of every four</a> American children is on food stamps. <script type="text/javascript">
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<noscript><a href='http://rotate.infowars.com/www/delivery/ck.php?n=a44dee25&cb=1654322' target='_blank'><img src='http://rotate.infowars.com/www/delivery/avw.php?zoneid=74&cb=1654322&n=a44dee25' border='0' alt='' </noscript><strong>5</strong> – The U.S. Postal Service has lost more than <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/post-office-near-default-losses-mount-5-1b-210808129.html" target="_blank" title="5 billion dollars">5 billion dollars</a> over the past year. It looks like the federal government is going to have to help the U.S. Postal Service out financially.<br />
<strong>6</strong> – Freddie Mac says that it is going to need another <a href="http://news.businessweek.com/article.asp?documentKey=1376-LU33XX6K50XT01-4MG91POC9PRHEJTTKCGFIK1CFI" target="_blank" title="$6 billion">$6 billion</a> bailout from the federal government.<br />
<strong>7</strong> – Fannie Mae says that it is going to need another <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Latest-News-Wires/2011/1110/Fannie-Mae-asks-taxpayers-for-another-bailout" target="_blank" title="$7.8 billion">$7.8 billion</a> bailout from the federal government.<br />
<strong>8</strong> – We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown <a href="http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34SNAPmonthly.htm" target="_blank" title="by over 8 percent">by another 8 percent</a> over the past year.<br />
<strong>9</strong> – The U.S. unemployment rate has been hovering around 9 percent for 30 straight months. It is currently sitting at <a href="http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000" target="_blank" title="9.0 percent">9.0 percent</a>.<br />
<strong>10</strong> – The total cost of just three federal government programs – the Department of Defense, Social Security and Medicare – exceeded the total amount of taxes brought in during fiscal 2010 <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/can-you-see-this-gorilla-2011-11" target="_blank" title="by 10 billion dollars">by 10 billion dollars</a>.<br />
<strong>11</strong> – Back in the year 2000, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1" target="_blank" title="11.3%">11.3%</a> of all Americans were living in poverty. Today,<a href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/13/news/economy/poverty_rate_income/index.htm?hpt=hp_t1" target="_blank" title="15.1%">15.1%</a> of all Americans are living in poverty.<br />
<strong>12</strong> – The “free trade” agenda being pushed by our globalist politicians is absolutely killing us. Even in industries that we were once dominant in we are now getting wiped out. For instance, in 2010 South Korea exported <a href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=267889" target="_blank" title="12 times">12 times</a> as many automobiles, trucks and parts to us as we exported to them. Hundreds of billions of dollars that should be going to support American jobs and businesses is going overseas instead.<br />
<strong>13</strong> – Since 1985, the federal government has added <a href="http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm" target="_blank" title="13 trillion dollars">13 trillion dollars</a> to the national debt.<br />
<strong>14</strong> – The U.S. Treasury Department says that instead of <a href="http://www.detnews.com/article/20111114/AUTO01/111140434" target="_blank" title="$14.3 billion">$14.3 billion</a>, the total losses from the auto industry bailouts will actually be <a href="http://www.detnews.com/article/20111114/AUTO01/111140434" target="_blank" title="$23.6 billion">$23.6 billion</a>.<br />
<strong>15</strong> – Amazingly, the U.S. federal government is now <a href="http://www.savingsbonds.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np" target="_blank" title="15 trillion dollars">15 trillion dollars</a> in debt. When Obama first took office the debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.<br />
<strong>16</strong> – According to U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Federal Reserve made <a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-looting-of-america-the-federal-reserve-made-16-trillion-in-secret-loans-to-their-bankster-friends-and-the-media-is-ignoring-the-eye-popping-corruption-that-has-been-uncovered" title="16 trillion dollars in secret loans">16 trillion dollars in secret loans</a> to big corporations, Wall Street banks, foreign nations and wealthy individuals during the financial crisis.<br />
<strong>17</strong> – The “too big to fail” banks just keep getting larger and larger. In the year 2000, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo held approximately 22 percent of all banking deposits in FDIC-insured institutions. By the middle of 2009 that figure <a href="http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/2009/09/15/break-up-the-big-banks/" target="_blank" title="was up to 39 percent">was up to 39 percent</a>. That is an increase of 17 percent in less than a decade.<br />
<strong>18</strong> – More Americans than ever are totally dependent on the government. In 1980, government transfer payments accounted for just <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-in-decline-2011-4#-9" target="_blank" title="11.7%">11.7%</a> of all income. Today, government transfer payments account for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/america-middle-class-in-decline-2011-4#-9" target="_blank" title="more than 18 percent">more than 18 percent</a> of all income.<br />
<strong>19</strong> – As a result of the lack of good jobs, we have huge numbers of Americans in their prime working years that cannot financially support themselves. As I have written about <a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/have-we-raised-an-entire-generation-of-young-men-that-do-not-know-how-to-be-men" title="previously">previously</a>, 19% of all American men between the ages of 25 and 34 are living with their parents.<br />
<strong>20</strong> – America is rapidly getting poorer. Today, more than one out of every seven Americans is living in poverty and more than 20 million of them are considered to be living in <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/extreme-poverty-is-now-at-record-levels-19-statistics-about-the-poor-that-will-absolutely-astound-you" target="_blank" title="extreme poverty">extreme poverty</a>.<br />
<strong>21</strong> – Income inequality is rising to very dangerous levels. According to a joint House and Senate report entitled “<a href="http://jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=91975589-257c-403b-8093-8f3b584a088c" target="_blank" title="Income Inequality and the Great Recession">Income Inequality and the Great Recession</a>“, the top one percent of all income earners in the United States brought in a total of 10.0 percent of all income in 1980, but by the time 2008 had rolled around that figure had skyrocketed to 21.0 percent.<br />
<strong>22</strong> – It is not just the federal government with a debt problem. State and local government debt has reached an all-time high of <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/municipal-bond-market-crash-2011-are-dozens-of-state-and-local-governments-about-to-default-on-their-debts" target="_blank" title="22 percent">22 percent</a> of U.S. GDP. Many state and local governments are even closer to going broke than the federal government is.<br />
<strong>23</strong> – If you can believe it, during 2010 an average of <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/35-facts-about-the-gutting-of-americas-industrial-might-that-should-make-you-very-angry" target="_blank" title="23 manufacturing facilities a day">23 manufacturing facilities a day</a> were shut down in the United States. Our economy is literally being gutted like a fish.<br />
<strong>24</strong> – Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/10-essential-fiscal-charts-demonstrating-americas-disastrous-condition" target="_blank" title="24 percent">24 percent</a> of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.<br />
<strong>25</strong> – According to Shadow Government Statistics, the “real” rate of unemployment in the United States <a href="http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts" target="_blank" title="is creeping up toward 25 percent">is creeping up toward 25 percent</a>.<br />
<strong>26</strong> – The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (an agency of the federal government) says that it ran a deficit of <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-1116-pensions-20111115,0,2131475.story" target="_blank" title="$26 billion">$26 billion</a> during the fiscal year that just ended and that it will probably need a bailout from the federal government.<br />
<strong>27</strong> – In the midst of everything else, the United States is bleeding national wealth like crazy. Tens of billions of dollars more goes out of this country each month than comes into it. Instead of improving, our trade deficit just keeps getting worse. For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China in 2010 <a href="http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html" target="_blank" title="was 27 times larger">was 27 times larger</a> than it was back in 1990.<br />
<strong>28</strong> – The U.S. <a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/category/housing-crash" title="housing crash">housing crash</a> is a crisis that never seems to end. According to one source, approximately 28 percent of all home loans in the United States <a href="http://news.goldseek.com/GoldenJackass/1307649600.php" target="_blank" title="are currently "underwater"">are currently “underwater”</a>. So what is going to happen if the economy gets even worse?<br />
<strong>29</strong> – The federal government has borrowed <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/gov-t-has-borrowed-2966055-household-oba" target="_blank" title="29,660 more dollars per household">more than 29,000 dollars per household</a> since Barack Obama first took office.<br />
<strong>30</strong> – 30 years ago, the U.S. national debt was about <a href="http://www.savingsbonds.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np" target="_blank" title="15 times">15 times</a> smaller than it is today. How in the world are we ever going to explain this foolishness to future generations?<br />
Please share these facts with as many people as you can. The reality is that most Americans have no idea just how bad things have become.<br />
Instead of dealing with the problems that this country is facing, most Americans just try to numb the pain. As a nation, we are incredibly addicted to pleasure and entertainment. It is so much easier to spend endless hours staring at the television than it is to get out there and try to do something to turn this country around.<br />
America is in big time trouble. We desperately need a new generation of heroes to step up to the plate.<br />
All of us have different talents and all of us have something that we can contribute.<br />
Will you answer the call?Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-43354972292937881992011-10-02T07:04:00.000-05:002011-10-02T07:04:09.619-05:00Prophets Of Doom: 12 Shocking Quotes From Insiders About The Horrific Economic Crisis That Is Almost Here<strong><a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/prophets-of-doom-12-shocking-quotes-from-insiders-that-are-warning-about-the-horrific-economic-crisis-that-is-almost-here">The Economic Collapse</a></strong><br />
Oct 1, 2011<br />
<div class="caption left"><img alt="Prophets Of Doom: 12 Shocking Quotes From Insiders About The Horrific Economic Crisis That Is Almost Here Prophets Of Doom 12 Shocking Quotes From Insiders That Are Warning About The Horrific Economic Crisis That Is Almost Here" height="220" src="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Prophets-Of-Doom-12-Shocking-Quotes-From-Insiders-That-Are-Warning-About-The-Horrific-Economic-Crisis-That-Is-Almost-Here.jpg" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;" title="Soros" width="320" /><br />
<strong> </strong></div>We are getting so close to a financial collapse in Europe that you can almost hear the debt bubbles popping. All across the western world, governments and major banks are rapidly becoming insolvent. So far, the powers that be are keeping all of the balls in the air by throwing around lots of bailout money. But now the political will for more bailouts is drying up and the number of troubled entities seems to grow by the day. Right now the western world is facing a debt crisis that is absolutely unprecedented in world history. Europe has had a tremendously difficult time just trying to keep Greece afloat, and several much larger European countries are now on the verge of a major financial crisis. In addition, there is a growing number of very large financial institutions all over the western world that are also rapidly approaching a day of reckoning. The global financial system is a sea or red ink, and when we get to the point where there are hundreds of ships going under how is it going to be possible to bail all of them out? The quotes that you are about to read show that quite a few top financial and political insiders know that things cannot hold together much longer and that a horrific economic crisis is coming. We built the global financial system on a foundation of debt, leverage and risk and now this house of cards that we have created is about to come tumbling down.<br />
<br />
A lot of people in politics and in the financial world know what is about to happen. Once in a while they will even be quite candid about it with the media.<br />
<br />
As I have written about previously, Europe is on the verge of a <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/20-signs-of-imminent-financial-collapse-in-europe" title="financial collapse">financial collapse</a>. If things go really badly, things could totally fall apart in a few weeks. But more likely it will be a few more months until the juggling act ends.<br />
<br />
Right now, the banking system in Europe is coming apart at the seams. Because the global financial system is so interconnected today, when major European banks start to fail it is going to have a cascading effect across the United States and Asia as well.<br />
<br />
The financial crisis of 2008 plunged us into the deepest recession since the Great Depression.<br />
The next financial crisis could potentially hit the world even harder.<br />
<br />
The following are 12 shocking quotes from insiders that are warning about the horrific economic crisis that is almost here….<br />
<br />
<strong>#1</strong> <a href="http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/soros72/English" target="_blank" title="George Soros">George Soros</a>: “Financial markets are driving the world towards another Great Depression with incalculable political consequences. The authorities, particularly in Europe, have lost control of the situation.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#2</strong> PIMCO CEO <a href="http://www.moneynews.com/FinanceNews/Pimco-El-Erian-Run-French/2011/09/22/id/411949" target="_blank" title="Mohammed El-Erian">Mohammed El-Erian</a>: “These are all signs of an institutional run on French banks. If it persists, the banks would have no choice but to delever their balance sheets in a very drastic and disorderly fashion. Retail depositors would get edgy and be tempted to follow trading and institutional clients through the exit doors. Europe would thus be thrown into a full-blown banking crisis that aggravates the sovereign debt trap, renders certain another economic recession, and significantly worsens the outlook for the global economy.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#3</strong> <a href="http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-28/euro-is-beyond-rescue-unicredit-s-szalay-berzeviczy-says?category=%2Fnews%2Fmostread%2F" target="_blank" title="Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy">Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy</a>, global head of securities services at UniCredit SpA (Italy’s largest bank): “The only remaining question is how many days the hopeless rearguard action of European governments and the European Central Bank can keep up Greece’s spirits.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#4</strong> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8797958/German-bailout-vote-is-too-little-too-late.html" target="_blank" title="Stefan Homburg">Stefan Homburg</a>, the head of Germany’s Institute for Public Finance: “The euro is nearing its ugly end. A collapse of monetary union now appears unavoidable.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#5</strong> EU Parliament Member <a href="http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/nigel-farage-financial-cataclysm-gold-to-unimaginable-levels_09232011" target="_blank" title="Nigel Farage">Nigel Farage</a>: “I think the worst in the financial system is yet to come, a possible cataclysm and if that happens the gold price could go (higher) to a number that we simply cannot, at this moment, even imagine.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#6</strong> <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/44666477" target="_blank" title="Carl Weinberg">Carl Weinberg</a>, the chief economist at High Frequency Economics: “At this point, our base case is that Greece will default within weeks.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#7</strong> Goldman Sachs strategist <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/even-goldman-sachs-secretly-believes-that-an-economic-collapse-is-coming" title="Alan Brazil">Alan Brazil</a>: <strong>“Solving a debt problem with more debt has not solved the underlying problem.</strong> In the US, Treasury debt growth financed the US consumer but has not had enough of an impact on job growth. Can the US continue to depreciate the world’s base currency?”<br />
<br />
<strong>#8</strong> International Labour Organization director general <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/sep/26/job-creation-governments-ilo-crisis" target="_blank" title="Juan Somavia">Juan Somavia</a> recently stated that total unemployment could “increase by some 20m to a total of 40m in G20 countries” by the end of 2012.<br />
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<strong>#9</strong> <a href="http://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/banken/finanzmaerkte-bereiten-ackermann-albtraeume/4575326.html" target="_blank" title="Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman">Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackerman</a>: “It is an open secret that numerous European banks would not survive having to revalue sovereign debt held on the banking book at market levels.”<br />
<br />
<strong>#10</strong> <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/09/06/news/international/eurozone_september_outlook/index.htm?iid=HP_LN" target="_blank" title="Alastair Newton, a strategist for Nomura Securities in London">Alastair Newton, a strategist for Nomura Securities in London</a>: “We believe that we are just about to enter a critical period for the eurozone and that the threat of some sort of break-up between now and year-end is greater than it has been at any time since the start of the crisis”<br />
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<strong>#11</strong> <a href="http://barnhardt.biz/" target="_blank" title="Ann Barnhardt">Ann Barnhardt</a>, head of Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc.: “It’s over. There is no coming back from this. The only thing that can happen is a total and complete collapse of EVERYTHING we now know, and humanity starts from scratch. And <strong>if you think that this collapse is going to play out without one hell of a big hot war, you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>#12</strong> <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/lakshman-achuthan-says-us-going-into-a-new-recession-2011-9#ixzz1ZRLPYFsj" target="_blank" title="Lakshman Achuthan">Lakshman Achuthan</a> of ECRI: “When I call a recession…that means that process is starting to feed on itself, which means that you can yell and scream and you can write a big check, but it’s not going to stop.”<br />
<br />
In my opinion, the epicenter of the “next wave” of the financial collapse is going to be in Europe. But that does not mean that the United States is going to be okay. <strong>The reality is that the United States never recovered from the last recession</strong> and <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/30-signs-that-the-u-s-economy-is-about-to-go-into-the-toilet" title="there are already a lot of signs">there are already a lot of signs</a> that we are getting ready to enter another major recession. A major financial collapse in Europe would just accelerate our plunge into a new <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/" title="economic crisis">economic crisis</a>.<br />
<br />
If you want to read something that will really freak you out, you should check out what Dr. Philippa Malmgren is saying. Dr. Philippa Malmgren is the President and founder of Principalis Asset Management. She is also a former member of the Bush economic team. You can find her bio <a href="http://www.pippamalmgren.com/75.html" target="_blank" title="right here">right here</a>.<br />
<br />
Malmgren is claiming that Germany is seriously considering bringing back the Deutschmark. In fact, she claims that Germany is very busy printing new currency up. In <a href="http://www.pippamalmgren.com/77.html" target="_blank" title="a list of things">a list of things</a> that we could see happen over the next few months, she included the following….<br />
<blockquote><em>“The Germans announce they are re-introducing the Deutschmark. They have already ordered the new currency and asked that the printers hurry up.”</em></blockquote>This is quite a claim for someone to be making. You would think that someone that used to work in the White House would not make such a claim unless it was based on something solid.<br />
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If Germany did decide to leave the euro, you would see an implosion of the euro that would be truly historic.<br />
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But as I have written about previously, it should not surprise anyone that the <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/is-the-end-of-the-euro-in-sight" title="end of the euro">end of the euro</a> is being talked about because the euro simply does not work.<br />
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The only way that the euro would have had a chance of working is if all of the governments using the euro would have kept debt levels very low.<br />
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Unfortunately, the financial systems of the western world are designed to push governments into high levels of debt.<br />
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The truth is that the euro was doomed from the very beginning.<br />
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Now we are approaching a day of reckoning. We have been living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, but the bubble is ending. There are several ways that the powers that be could handle this, but all of them will lead to greater <a href="http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/is-financial-instability-the-new-normal" title="financial instability">financial instability</a>.<br />
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In the end, we will see that the debt-fueled prosperity that the western world has been enjoying for decades was just an illusion.<br />
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Debt is a very cruel master. It will almost always bring more pain and suffering than you anticipated.<br />
It is easy to get into debt, but it can be very difficult to get out of debt.<br />
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There is no way that the western world can unwind this debt spiral easily.<br />
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The only way that another massive economic crisis can be put off for even a little while would be for the powers that be to “kick the can down the road” a little farther by creating even more debt.<br />
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But in the end, you can never solve a debt problem with more debt.<br />
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The next several years are going to be an incredibly clear illustration of why debt is bad.<br />
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When the dominoes start to fall, we are going to witness a financial avalanche which is going to destroy the finances of millions of people.<br />
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You might want to try to get out of the way while you still can.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-68464750903801588942011-09-26T12:31:00.000-05:002011-09-26T12:31:44.065-05:00America and Europe: Saving the Rich and Losing the Economy<strong>Dr. Paul Craig Roberts</strong><br />
<a href="prisonplanet.comhttp://www.infowars.com/america-and-europe-saving-the-rich-and-losing-the-economy/">Prisonplanet.com</a>Sept 26, 2011<br />
<div class="caption left"><img alt="dollars" height="320" src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTvdDTXGj8cJyE_uZMsbOq2TiXO9AoIlajdK9k7JG3-hat-ugIwloMXu3ipZQ" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-top: 5px;" title="dollars" width="220" /><br />
<strong> </strong></div>Economic policy in the United States and Europe has failed, and people are suffering.<br />
Economic policy failed for three reasons: (1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign countries, such as China and India, where labor is inexpensive; (2) policymakers permitted financial deregulation that unleashed fraud and debt leverage on a scale previously unimaginable; (3) policymakers responded to the resulting financial crisis by imposing austerity on the population and running the printing press in order to bail out banks and prevent any losses to the banks regardless of the cost to national economies and innocent parties.<br />
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Jobs offshoring was made possible because the collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in China and India opening their vast excess supplies of labor to Western exploitation. Pressed by Wall Street for higher profits, US corporations relocated their factories abroad. Foreign labor working with Western capital, technology, and business know-how is just as productive as US labor. However, the excess supplies of labor (and lower living standards) mean that Indian and Chinese labor can be hired for less than labor’s contribution to the value of output. The difference flows into profits, resulting in capital gains for shareholders and performance bonuses for executives.<br />
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As reported by Manufacturing and Technology News (September 20, 2011) the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages reports that in the last 10 years, the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent.<br />
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These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the result of business failures.<br />
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US politicians, such as Buddy Roemer, blame the collapse of US manufacturing on Chinese competition and “unfair trade practices.” However, it is US corporations that move their factories abroad, thus replacing domestic production with imports. Half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations.<br />
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The wage differential is substantial. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2009, average hourly take-home pay for US workers was $23.03. Social insurance expenditures add $7.90 to hourly compensation and benefits paid by employers add $2.60 per hour for a total labor compensation cost of $33.53.<br />
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In China as of 2008, total hourly labor cost was $1.36, and India’s is within a few cents of this amount. Thus, a corporation that moves 1,000 jobs to China saves saves $32,000 every hour in labor cost.These savings translate into higher stock prices and executive compensation, not in lower prices for consumers who are left unemployed by the labor arbitrage.<br />
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Republican economists blame “high” US wages for for the current high rate of unemployment. However, US wages are about the lowest in the developed world. They are far below hourly labor cost in Norway ($53.89), Denmark ($49.56), Belgium ($49.40), Austria ($48.04), and Germany ($46.52). The US might have the world’s largest economy, but its hourly workers rank 14th on the list of the best paid. Americans also have a higher unemployment rate. The “headline” rate that the media hypes is 9.1 percent, but this rate does not include any discouraged workers or workers forced into part-time jobs because no full-time jobs are available.<br />
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The US government has another unemployment rate (U6) that includes workers who have been too discouraged to seek a job for six months or less. This unemployment rate is over 16 percent. Statistician John Williams (Shadowstats.com) estimates the unemployment rate when long-term discouraged workers (more than six months) are included. This rate is over 22 percent.<br />
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Most emphasis is on the lost manufacturing jobs. However, the high speed Internet has made it possible to offshore many professional service jobs, such as software engineering, Information Technology, research and design. Jobs that comprised ladders of upward mobility for US college graduates have been moved offshore, thus reducing the value to Americans of many university degrees. Unlike former times, today an increasing number of graduates return home to live with their parents as there are insufficient jobs to support their independent existence.<br />
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All the while, the US government allows in each year one million legal immigrants, an unknown number of illegal immigrants, and a large number of foreign workers on H-1B and L-1 work visas. In other words, the policies of the US government maximize the unemployment rate of American citizens.<br />
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Republican economists and politicians pretend that this is not the case and that unemployed Americans consist of people too lazy to work who game the welfare system. Republicans pretend that cutting unemployment benefits and social assistance will force “lazy people who are living off the taxpayers” to go to work.<br />
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To deal with the adverse impact on the economy from the loss of jobs and consumer demand from offshoring, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates in order to create a real estate boom. Lower interest rates pushed up real estate prices. People refinanced their houses and spent the equity. Construction, furniture and appliance sales boomed. But unlike previous expansions based on rising real income, this one was based on an increase in consumer indebtedness.<br />
There is a limit to how much debt can increase in relation to income, and when this limit was reached, the bubble popped.<br />
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When consumer debt could rise no further, the large fraudulent component in mortgage-backed derivatives and the unreserved swaps (AIG, for example) threatened financial institutions with insolvency and froze the banking system. Banks no longer trusted one another. Cash was hoarded. Treasury Secretary Paulson, browbeat Congress into massive taxpayer loans to financial institutions that functioned as casinos. The Paulson Bailout (TARP) was large but insignificant compared to the $16.1 trillion (a sum larger than US GDP or national debt) that the Federal Reserve lent to private financial institutions in the US and Europe.<br />
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In making these loans, the Federal Reserve violated its own rules. At this point, capitalism ceased to function. The financial institutions were “too big to fail,” and thus taxpayer subsidies took the place of bankruptcy and reorganization. In a word, the US financial system was socialized as the losses of the American financial institutions were transferred to taxpayers.<br />
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European banks were swept up into the financial crisis by their unwitting purchase of the junk financial instruments marketed by Wall Street. The financial junk had been given investment grade rating by the same incompetent agency that recently downgraded US Treasury bonds.<br />
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The Europeans had their own bailouts, often with American money (Federal Reserve loans). All the while Europe was brewing an additional crisis of its own. By joining the European Union and (except for the UK) accepting a common European currency, the individual member countries lost the services of their own central banks as creditors. In the US and UK the two countries’ central banks can print money with which to purchase US and UK debt. This is not possible for member countries in the EU.<br />
When financial crisis from excessive debt hit the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) their central banks could not print euros in order to buy up their bonds, as the Federal Reserve did with “quantitative easing.” Only the European Central Bank (ECB) can create euros, and it is prevented by charter and treaty from printing euros in order to bail out sovereign debt.<br />
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In Europe, as in the US, the driver of economic policy quickly became saving the private banks from losses on their portfolios. A deal was struck with the socialist government of Greece, which represented the banks and not the Greek people. The ECB would violate its charter and together with the IMF, which would also violate its charter, would lend enough money to the Greek government to avoid default on its sovereign bonds to the private banks that had purchased the bonds. In return for the ECB and IMF loans and in order to raise the money to repay them, the Greek government had to agree to sell to private investors the national lottery, Greece’s ports and municipal water systems, a string of islands that are a national preserve, and in addition to impose a brutal austerity on the Greek people by lowering wages, cutting social benefits and pensions, raising taxes, and laying off or firing government workers.<br />
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In other words, the Greek population is to be sacrificed to a small handful of foreign banks in Germany, France and the Netherlands.<br />
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The Greek people, unlike “their” socialist government, did not regard this as a good deal. They have been in the streets ever since.<br />
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Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the ECB, said that the austerity imposed on Greece was a first step. If Greece did not deliver on the deal, the next step was for the EU to take over Greece’s political sovereignty, make its budget, decide its taxation, decide its expenditures and from this process squeeze out enough from Greeks to repay the ECB and IMF for lending Greece the money to pay the private banks.<br />
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In other words, Europe under the EU and Jean-Claude Trichet is a return to the most extreme form of feudalism in which a handful of rich are pampered at the expense of everyone else.<br />
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This is what economic policy in the West has become–a tool of the wealthy used to enrich themselves by spreading poverty among the rest of the population.<br />
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On September 21 the Federal Reserve announced a modified QE 3. The Federal Reserve announced that the bank would purchase $400 billion of long-term Treasury bonds over the next nine months in an effort to drive long-term US interest rates even further below the rate of inflation, thus maximizing the negative rate of return on the purchase of long-term Treasury bonds. The Federal Reserve officials say that this will lower mortgage rates by a few basis points and renew the housing market.<br />
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The officials say that QE 3, unlike its predecessors, will not result in the Federal Reserve printing more dollars in order to monetize US debt. Instead, the central bank will raise money for the bond purchases by selling holdings of short-term debt. Apparently, the Federal Reserve believes it can do this without raising short-term interest rates, because back during the recent debt-ceiling-government-shutdown-crisis, the Federal Reserve promised banks that it would keep the short-term interest rate (essentially zero) constant for two years.<br />
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The Fed’s new policy will do far more harm than good. Interest rates are already negative. To make them more so will have no positive effect. People aren’t buying houses because interest rates are too high, but because they are either unemployed or worried about their jobs and do not see a recovering economy.<br />
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Already insurance companies can make no money on their investments. Consequently, they are unable to build their reserves against claims. Their only alternative is to raise their premiums. The cost of a homeowner’s policy will go up by more than the cost of a mortgage will decline. The cost of health insurance will go up. The cost of car insurance will rise. The Federal Reserve’s newly announced policy will impose more costs on the economy than it will reduce.<br />
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In addition, in America today savings earn nothing. Indeed, they produce an ongoing loss as the interest rate is below the inflation rate. The Federal Reserve has interest rates so low that only professionals who are playing arbitrage with algorithm programmed computer models can make money. The typical saver and investor can get nothing on bank CDs, money market funds, municipal and government bonds. Only high risk debt, such as Greek and Spanish bonds, pay an interest rate that is higher than inflation.<br />
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For four years interest rates, when properly measured, have been negative. Americans are getting by, maintaining living standards, by consuming their capital. Even those with a cushion are eating their seed corn. The path that the US economy is on means that the number of Americans without resources to sustain them will be rising. Considering the extraordinary political incompetence of the Democratic Party, the right-wing of the Republican Party, which is committed to eliminating income support programs, could find itself in power. If the right-wing Republicans implement their program, the US will be beset with political and social instability. As Gerald Celente says, “when people have have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-65684765980793922432011-09-25T10:47:00.000-05:002011-09-25T10:47:40.119-05:00A President Who is Helpless in the Face of Middle East Reality<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><em>Obama's UN speech insists Israelis and Palestinians are equal parties to conflict</em><br />
<b>By Robert Fisk<br />
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September 23, 2011 "</b></span><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-a-president-who-is-helpless-in-the-face-of-middle-east-reality-2359433.html"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><b>The Independent</b></span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><b>" --</b>Today should be Mahmoud Abbas's finest hour. Even The New York Times has discovered that "a grey man of grey suits and sensible shoes, may be slowly emerging from his shadow".</span> <br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">But this is nonsense. The colourless leader of the Palestinian Authority, who wrote a 600-page book on his people's conflict with Israel without once mentioning the word "occupation", should have no trouble this evening in besting Barack Hussein Obama's pathetic, humiliating UN speech on Wednesday in which he handed US policy in the Middle East over to Israel's gimmick government.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">For the American President who called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Arab lands, an end to the theft of Arab land in the West Bank – Israeli "settlements" is what he used to call it – and a Palestinian state by 2011, <strong>Obama's performance was pathetic.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">As usual, Hanan Ashrawi, the only eloquent Palestinian voice in New York this week, got it right. "I couldn't believe what I heard," she told Haaretz, that finest of Israeli newspapers. "It sounded as though the Palestinians were the ones occupying Israel. There wasn't one word of empathy for the Palestinians. He spoke only of the Israelis' troubles..." Too true. And as usual, the sanest Israeli journalists, in their outspoken condemnation of Obama, proved that the princes of American journalists were cowards. "The limp, unimaginative speech that US President Barack Obama delivered at the United Nations... reflects how helpless the American President is in the face of Middle East realities," Yael Sternhell wrote.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">And as the days go by, and we discover whether the Palestinians respond to Obama's grovelling performance with a third intifada or with a shrug of weary recognition that this is how things always were, the facts will continue to prove that<strong> the US administration remains a tool of Israel when it comes to Israel's refusal to give the Palestinians a state.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><strong>How come, let's ask, that the US ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, flew from Tel Aviv to New York for the statehood debate on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's own aircraft?</strong> How come Netanyahu was too busy chatting to the Colombian President to listen to Obama's speech? He only glanced through the Palestinian bit of the text when he was live-time, face to face with the American President. This wasn't "chutzpah". This was insult, pure and simple.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">And Obama deserved it. After praising the Arab Spring/Summer/ Autumn, whatever – yet again running through the individual acts of courage of Arab Tunisians and Egyptians as if he had been behind the Arab Awakening all along, the man dared to give the Palestinians 10 minutes of his time, slapping them in the face for daring to demand statehood from the UN. Obama even – and this was the funniest part of his preposterous address to the UN – suggested that the Palestinians and Israelis were two equal "parties" to the conflict.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><strong>A Martian listening to this speech would think, as Ms Ashrawi suggested, that the Palestinians were occupying Israel rather than the other way round.</strong> <strong>No mention of Israeli occupation, no mention of refugees, or the right of return or of the theft of Arab Palestinian land by the Israeli government against all international law. </strong>But plenty of laments for the besieged people of Israel, rockets fired at their houses, suicide bombs – Palestinian sins, of course, but <strong>no reference to the carnage of Gaza, the massive death toll of Palestinians</strong> – and even the historical persecution of the Jewish people and the Holocaust.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">That persecution is a fact of history. So is the evil of the Holocaust. But THE PALESTINIANS DID NOT COMMIT THESE ACTS. It was the Europeans – whose help in denying Palestinian statehood Obama is now seeking – who committed this crime of crimes. So we were then back to the "equal parties", as if the Israeli occupiers and the occupied Palestinians were on a level playing ground.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Madeleine Albright used to adopt this awful lie. "It's up to the parties themselves," she would say, washing her hands, Pilate-like, of the whole business the moment Israel threatened to call out its supporters in America. Heaven knows if Mahmoud Abbas can produce a 1940 speech at the UN today. But at least we all know who the appeaser is.</span>Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-89585980350966811442011-09-10T12:39:00.001-05:002011-09-10T12:42:09.676-05:00Follow me on TwitterFor frequent updates on the growing Fascist Corporatist Plutocracy:<br />
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Check out me out at <a href="http://twitter.com/#!/truthismaster">http://twitter.com/#!/truthismaster</a><br />
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Dr. J. P. HubertDr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-50837984506834885752011-09-06T09:33:00.001-05:002011-09-06T09:40:24.208-05:00Labor’s Demise As A Countervailing Power: "Labor Day" should be renamed "Corporation Day" or "War Day"<div align="justify"><div class="articleAuthorName">by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts</div><div class="bigArticleText12"><a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/">Global Research</a></div><div class="bigArticleText12">September 3, 2011</div><br />
It is Labor Day weekend, 2011, but labor has nothing to celebrate. The jobs that once gave American workers a stake in capitalism have left and gone away. Corporations in pursuit of near-term profits have moved labor’s jobs to China, India, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea and Eastern Europe. </div><br />
Labor arbitrage, that is, the substitution of foreign labor that is paid less than its productivity for American labor, has enriched Wall Street, shareholders and corporate CEOs, but it has devastated American employment, household incomes, tax base, and the outlook for the US economy. <br />
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This Labor Day week-end’s job report, announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday, September 2, says zero net new jobs were created in August, a number 250,000 less than the amount of monthly job creation necessary to make progress in reducing America’s high rate of unemployment. <br />
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The zero figure is actually an optimistic number. As John Williams (shadowstats.com) has made clear, problems with the BLS’s seasonal adjustments and “birth-death” model during the prolonged downturn that began in December 2007 result in the BLS over-estimating new jobs and underestimating lost jobs. <br />
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Seasonal adjustments and the “birth-death” model were designed with a growing economy in mind and result in miscounts during downturns. For example, the “birth-death” model estimates new jobs that are created from new start-up companies that are not yet reporting, and it estimates the job losses from companies that have gone out of business. In a growing economy, start-ups exceed jobs losses, but the situation reverses during downturns or during periods of sub-normal job growth. For the past forty-four months, the “birth-death” model has overestimated the number of new jobs created. When the annual revisions are made to the job reports, the excess jobs are taken out, but it is seldom headline news. <br />
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The reason that nearly four years of economic stimulus, consisting of large federal budget deficits and near zero interest rates, hasn’t revived the economy is that <strong>the jobs that Americans once had have been moved offshore. Stimulus cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been given to foreign countries. </strong><br />
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Post-World War II Keynesian economists, such as Paul Krugman and Robert Reich, think that if the federal government would add more stimulus by enlarging the already massive federal deficit, new jobs would somehow be created to take the place of those that have left. This is a delusion. Not only have the supply chains necessary to support US economic activity been disrupted and broken by offshoring, but also the same incentive--excess supplies of foreign labor that produces more value than it is paid--that sent jobs abroad is still operative. <br />
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In a word,<strong> the US economy has been de-industrializing, moving from a developed to an underdeveloped economy, for the past two decades</strong>. It has been the case for many years that when the US economy manages to eke out new jobs, they are in non-tradable domestic services, such as health care and social assistance, waitresses and bar tenders, retail clerks. Non-tradable employment consists of jobs that do not produce goods and services that could be exported to reduce the large US trade deficit. <br />
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<strong>The long-term deterioration in the US economy has been covered up by “reforming” the official measures of unemployment and inflation</strong>. The U3 measure of unemployment, the current 9.1% unemployment rate, only measures unemployment among those who are actively seeking a job. Those who have become discouraged by the inability to find a job and have ceased looking are not counted as being among the unemployed, and the U3 measure makes no adjustment for those who are forced into part-time jobs because there is no full-time employment. <br />
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The government knows that the U3 “headline” unemployment rate is seriously understated and provides a broader measure known as U6. This measure, which is seldom reported by the financial media, includes short-term discouraged workers (those who have not looked for jobs for six months or less) and an adjustment for those who wish full time employment but can only find part time work. Currently, this measure of unemployment stands at 16.2%. <br />
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In 1994 the Clinton “progressive” administration defined long-term discouraged workers out of existence. Consequently, no official unemployment rate includes long-term (more than six months) discouraged workers as unemployed. John Williams estimates this number and adds it to the U6 measure to produce<strong> a current rate of US unemployment of 22.7%, an unemployment rate 2.5 times higher than the official rate.</strong> <br />
<div align="justify"><br />
<a href="http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts">http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts</a> </div><br />
Similar understatement exists in the measure of inflation known as the Consumer Price Index. In order to reduce cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security checks and to hold down other inflation adjustments, the “progressive” Clinton administration accepted the Boskin Commission’s recommendation to introduce substitution into what had been a fixed, weighted, basket of goods used to measure the cost of a constant standard of living. In the new “reformed” measure, if the price of an item increases, say New York strip steak, the index assumes that consumers switch to a less expensive cut, such as round steak. Thus, the price increase doesn’t show up in the CPI. <br />
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Consumers, or a number of them, do tend to behave in this way. However, since the basket of goods comprising the CPI is no longer constant, but changes with price changes,<strong> the CPI has become a variable measure of the cost of living that reduces the inflation rate by measuring a lower standard of living.</strong> <br />
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John Williams estimates the CPI according to the previous official methodology that used a fixed basket of goods. He finds the rate of inflation to be much higher than is reported by the substitution-based methodology. http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts <br />
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<strong>The understatement of inflation serves to boost real Gross Domestic Product growth</strong>. In order to compare how much larger (or smaller) the economy is this year compared to last year, the GDP figure has to be adjusted for inflation. If the economy grew 5% in nominal terms and inflation was 3%, then GDP grew 2% in real terms, that is, real goods and services, as opposed to mere price rises, increased 2% over the year. <br />
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When John Williams <a href="http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/gross-domestic-product-charts">adjusts US GDP</a> with the former or traditional measure of inflation, he finds that there has been <strong>no growth in real GDP for several years. In other words, during the period of “economic recovery” the economy has actually been declining. </strong><br />
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<strong>American economic decline began with offshoring during the Clinton administration</strong>. Instead of addressing this threat, the Clinton administration launched the neoconservative program of American Empire with American and NATO naked aggression against Serbia, sending the Serbian leader off to be tried as a war criminal for resisting the dissolution of his country. <br />
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The Bush/Cheney regime elevated the pursuit of American Empire under cover of “the war on terror.” Based entirely on lies and falsified intelligence, Bush/Cheney launched wars against the Taliban, who were unifying Afghanistan, and against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. <br />
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In the 1980s Hussein was used by Washington to launch a war against the revolutionary government in Iran that had overthrown the American puppet government, headed by the Shah of Iran. Ever since Washington lost its puppet rule over the Iranians, Washington has refused diplomatic relations with Iran. In the place of diplomatic relations, Washington demonizes Iran in order to set the country up for another attack a la Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. Syria is next. <br />
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Saddam Hussein’s service to Washington was overlooked when it became more important to eliminate support for Hamas and Hezbollah, two barriers to Israel’s expansion in the Middle East, than to maintain Washington’s gratitude to an Iraqi pawn. <br />
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Despite unequivocal reports from arms inspectors that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and most certainly had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, top Bush/Cheney regime officials demonized Iraq as the greatest threat to America. The imagery of mushroom clouds from nuclear weapons was evoked, A war was launched entirely on false pretexts that destroyed a country and left over one million Iraqis dead and four million displaced. <strong>What Washington did to Iraq is what the Nazis were tried and executed for at the Nuremberg Trials.</strong> <br />
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Obama was elected in order to stop the illegal and senseless wars. Instead, Obama both continued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and expanded the wars into Libya, Pakistan, and Yemen. Since the deregulation of the financial system under the Bush/Cheney regime and the “war on terror,” <strong>the entire economy of the US has been sacrificed for the benefit of the financial sector and the military/security complex.</strong> <br />
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Labor Day is an anachronism. It should be renamed Corporation Day or War Day to celebrate the success of Bush/Obama in eliminating labor unions as a countervailing power to corporate power and the elevation of War as the highest goal of the American state.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-69283017427085872732011-09-01T17:36:00.001-05:002011-09-01T17:50:37.880-05:00Four Years Later: The Kennebunkport Warning of August 2007 Confirmed by Dick Cheney in his New AutobiographyWebster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.<br />
<a href="http://tarpley.net/"><img class="bullet" src="http://tarpley.net/images/plato.ico" /><strong><span style="color: #666666;">TARPLEY.net</span></strong></a><br />
<div class="post-bodycopy clearfix"><div id="content_div-3259">August 31, 2011<br />
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This week marks the fourth anniversary of the <a href="http://tarpley.net/2007/08/24/the-kennebunkport-warning/" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: #666666;">Kennebunkport Warning</span></a>, whose text the reader will find elsewhere on the <a href="http://tarpley.net/">Tarpley.net</a> web site, together with related documentation. The Kennebunkport Warning of late August 2007 sought to prevent a false flag terror operation designed by the US-UK rogue network to facilitate an attack on Iran and/or Syria. Today, four years later, world events have come full circle, and <strong>we must once again be on guard for a new and wider war in the same region. This might take the form of an attack by Turkey on Syria, organized in advance with the NATO command and occurring under the cover story of events inside Syria</strong>, where an uprising of armed commandos of the Moslem Brotherhood now appears to have been largely quelled by the Syrian Army.<br />
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In order to attack Syria without being portrayed as an aggressor, Turkey will need a better pretext. Given the traditions of NATO, <strong>it is likely that an attempt will be made to furnish such a pretext in the form of a false flag terror event inside Turkey to be blamed on Syria or Hezbollah, or in the form of an staged Gulf of Tonkin incident to permit the charge that Syria attacked Turkey first</strong>. Or, a large massacre of Moslem Brotherhood supporters inside Syria could be carried out in reality or merely simulated on a Hollywood set in Doha, Qatar, to motivate an invasion based on humanitarian grounds.<br />
<h3>Cheney’s June 2007 Demand for an Attack on Syria</h3><a href="http://rockcreekfreepress.com/RockCreekFreePressNo4.pdf" target="_b"><img alt="Dick Cheney" src="http://tarpley.net/images/cheney-us-strike.jpg" style="border: 1px solid rgb(51, 51, 51); float: left; margin: 5px;" /></a><br />
Former US Vice President Dick Cheney is about to publish his autobiography, <em>In My Time</em>. Here, according to pre-publication press accounts, Cheney describes his June 2007 attempt to convince Bush to launch a bombing attack on Syria over the alleged Syrian nuclear program. Cheney says that he raised the issue, apparently at a meeting of the National Security Council. Bush asked if there was any support for the idea, and there was none. So, Cheney’s attempt to launch the attack on Syria by way of legal and institutional channels failed.<br />
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Cheney does not relate in his book what happened then. The US rogue network (variously referred to as invisible government, secret government, parallel government, or deep state – of which Cheney is a spokesman, operative, or appendage), having been rebuffed by the legal government in the form of the Bush NSC, characteristically sought to carry out the desired attack anyway, by illegal means.<br />
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It was around July 21, 2007 that I posted on the internet an article entitled “<a href="http://tarpley.net/2007/07/21/cheney-determined-to-strike-in-us-with-wmd-this-summer/" style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: #666666;">Cheney Determined to Strike in US</span></a>.” This article became the headline story on the front page of the <em><a href="http://rockcreekfreepress.com/RockCreekFreePressNo4.pdf" style="font-weight: bold;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666;">Rock Creek Free Press</span></a></em>, and was thus widely distributed in boxes all over Washington DC, especially around Metro stations.<br />
During August 2007, “Cheney Determined to Strike in US” was a very accurate description of the central political reality. This is what Cheney has now confirmed for us in his autobiography. <br />
<h3>The Rogue B-52, Hijacked by the Parallel Government</h3>Rogue network personnel embedded in the US Air Force hijacked a US Air Force B-52 intercontinental strategic bomber equipped with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles and flew it from Minot AFB in Colorado to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, the latter being the main point of departure for US flights to the Middle East. This flight was made totally outside of the command and control procedures of the US Air Force; it was an invisible government operation. It is clear that this rogue B-52 was intended to join the Israeli attack on Syria, which did in fact occur at the end of the first week of September, 2007.<br />
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Fortunately, the flight of this hijacked rogue B-52 towards the Middle East was blocked on the runway at Barksdale. This was done partly by rival intelligence factions, whose clash enveloped official Washington in a test of wills. In the end, the neocon faction was defeated, and the Brzezinski faction gained the upper hand.<br />
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In the background, it is entirely possible that the Kennebunkport Warning, for which signatures had been organized by Bruce Marshall and others, was on its way to being posted on over 110,000 websites, contributed something to blocking the flight of the rogue B-52.<br />
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In the wake of these events, a number of individuals and web sites in the 9/11 truth movement outdid themselves in condemning not the faction behind Cheney, but rather the Kennebunkport Warning and its supporters. They should have been agitating for an immediate investigation of the rogue B-52, which might have exposed some of the tentacles of the rogue network, which has remained more or less untouched. By their actions, these individuals and web sites helped usher in the substantial collapse of the 9/11 truth movement, which largely fell apart during 2008 and 2009.<br />
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The following summary of issues around the Kennebunkport Warning, written in October 2007, sums up the lessons of these events. <a class="more-link" href="http://tarpley.net/2011/08/31/four-years-later-the-kennebunkport-warning-of-august-2007-confirmed-by-dick-cheney-on-his-new-autobiography/#more-3259"><strong><span style="color: #666666;">Continue reading Four Years Later: The Kennebunkport Warning of August 2007 Confirmed by Dick Cheney in his New Autobiography</span></strong></a></div></div>Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-20997156107936518372011-08-24T13:03:00.001-05:002011-08-24T13:05:52.310-05:009/11 After A Decade: Have We Learned Anything?August 24, 2011 at 12:26:34<br />
By Paul Craig Roberts<br />
<a href="http://opednews.com/">opednews.com</a><br />
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In a few days it will be the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. How well has the US government's official account of the event held up over the decade? <br />
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Not very well. The chairman, vice chairman, and senior legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission wrote books partially disassociating themselves from the commission's report. They said that the Bush administration put obstacles in their path, that information was withheld from them, that President Bush agreed to testify only if he was chaperoned by Vice President Cheney and neither were put under oath, that Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission and that the commission considered referring the false testimony for investigation for obstruction of justice. <br />
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In their book, the chairman and vice chairman, Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, wrote that the 9/11 Commission was "set up to fail." Senior counsel John Farmer, Jr., wrote that the US government made "a decision not to tell the truth about what happened," and that the NORAD "tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public." Kean said, "We to this day don't know why NORAD told us what they told us, it was just so far from the truth." <br />
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Most of the questions from the 9/11 families were not answered. Important witnesses were not called. The commission only heard from those who supported the government's account. The commission was a controlled political operation, not an investigation of events and evidence. Its membership consisted of former politicians. No knowledgeable experts were appointed to the commission. <br />
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One member of the 9/11 Commission, former Senator Max Cleland, responded to the constraints placed on the commission by the White House: "If this decision stands, I, as a member of the commission, cannot look any American in the eye, especially family members of victims, and say the commission had full access. This investigation is now compromised." Cleland resigned rather than have his integrity compromised. <br />
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To be clear, neither Cleland nor members of the commission suggested that 9/11 was an inside job to advance a war agenda. Nevertheless, neither Congress nor the media wondered, at least not out loud, why President Bush was unwilling to appear before the commission under oath or without Cheney; why Pentagon and FAA officials lied to the commission or, if the officials did not lie, why the commission believed they lied, or why the White House resisted for so long any kind of commission being formed, even one under its control. <br />
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One would think that if a handful of Arabs managed to outwit not merely the CIA and FBI but all 16 US intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of our allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times on one morning, air traffic control, etc., the President, Congress, and the media would be demanding to know how such an improbable event could occur. Instead, the White House put up a wall of resistance to finding out, and Congress and the media showed little interest. <br />
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During the decade that has passed, numerous 9/11 Truth organizations have formed. There are Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Remember Building 7.org, and a New York group which includes 9/11 families. These groups call for a real investigation. <br />
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David Ray Griffen has written 10 carefully researched books documenting problems in the government's account. Scientists have pointed out that the government has no explanation for the molten steel. NIST has been forced to admit that WTC 7 was in free fall for part of its descent, and a scientific team led by a professor of nano-chemistry at the University of Copenhagen has reported finding nano-thermite in the dust from the buildings. <br />
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Larry Silverstein, who had the lease on the World Trade Center buildings, said in a PBS broadcast that the decision was made "to pull" Building 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11. Chief fire marshals have said that no forensic investigation was made of the buildings' destruction and that the absence of investigation was a violation of law. <br />
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Some efforts have been made to explain away some of the evidence that is contrary to the official account, but most of the contrary evidence is simply ignored. The fact remains that the skepticism of a large number of knowledgeable experts has had no effect on the government's position other than a member of the Obama administration suggesting that the government infiltrate the 9/11 truth organizations in order to discredit them. <br />
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The practice has been to brand experts not convinced by the government's case "conspiracy theorists." But of course the government's own theory is a conspiracy theory, an even less likely one once a person realizes its full implication of intelligence and operational failures. The implied failures are extraordinarily large; yet, no one was ever held accountable. <br />
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Moreover, what do 1,500 architects and engineers have to gain from being ridiculed as conspiracy theorists? They certainly will never receive another government contract, and many surely lost business as a result of their "anti-American" stance. Their competitors must have made hay out of their "unpatriotic doubts." Indeed, my reward for reporting on how matters stand a decade after the event will be mail telling me that as I hate America so much I should move to Cuba. <br />
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Scientists have even less incentive to express any doubts, which probably explains why there are not 1,500 Physicists for 9/11 Truth. Few physicists have careers independent of government grants or contracts. It was a high school physics teacher who forced NIST to abandon its account of Building 7's demise. Physicist Stephen Jones, who first reported finding evidence of explosives, had his tenure bought out by BYU, which no doubt found itself under government pressure. <br />
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We can explain away contrary evidence as coincidences and mistakes and conclude that only the government got it all correct, the same government that got everything else wrong. <br />
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In fact, the government has not explained anything. The NIST report is merely a simulation of what might have caused the towers to fail if NIST's assumptions programed into the computer model are correct. But NIST supplies no evidence that its assumptions are correct. <br />
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Building 7 was not mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report, and many Americans are still unaware that three buildings came down on 9/11. <br />
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Let me be clear about my point. I am not saying that some black op group in the neoconservative Bush administration blew up the buildings in order to advance the neoconservative agenda of war in the Middle East. If there is evidence of a coverup, it could be the government covering up its incompetence and not its complicity in the event. Even if there were definite proof of government complicity, it is uncertain that Americans could accept it. Architects, engineers, and scientists live in a fact-based community, but for most people facts are no match for emotions. <br />
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My point is how un-inquisitive the executive branch, including the security agencies, Congress, the media, and much of the population are about the defining event of our time. <br />
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There is no doubt that 9/11 is the determinant event. It has led to a decade of ever expanding wars, to the shredding of the Constitution, and to a police state. On August 22 Justin Raimondo reported that he and his website, Antiwar.com, are being monitored by the FBI's Electronic Communication Analysis Unit to determine if Antiwar.com is "a threat to National Security" working "on behalf of a foreign power." <br />
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Francis A. Boyle, an internationally known professor and attorney of international law, has reported that when he refused a joint FBI-CIA request to violate the attorney/client privilege and become an informant on his Arab-American clients, he was placed on the US government's terrorist watch list. <br />
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Boyle has been critical of the US government's approach to the Muslim world, but Raimondo has never raised, nor permitted any contributor to raise, any suspicion about US government complicity in 9/11. Raimondo merely opposes war, and that is enough for the FBI to conclude that he needs watching as a possible threat to national security. <br />
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The US government's account of 9/11 is the foundation of the open-ended wars that are exhausting America's resources and destroying its reputation, and it is the foundation of the domestic police state that ultimately will shut down all opposition to the wars. Americans are bound to the story of the 9/11 Muslim terrorist attack, because it is what justifies the slaughter of civilian populations in several Muslim countries, and it justifies a domestic police state as the only means of securing safety from terrorists, who already have morphed into "domestic extremists" such as environmentalists, animal rights groups, and antiwar activists. <br />
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Today Americans are unsafe, not because of terrorists and domestic extremists, but because they have lost their civil liberties and have no protection from unaccountable government power. One would think that how this came about would be worthy of public debate and congressional hearings. <br />
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Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-11274640883184826552011-08-24T10:38:00.000-05:002011-08-24T10:38:46.083-05:00US Economic Crisis: On the Edge with Max Keiser<object style="height: 390px; width: 640px;"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bC-EQM7YHz0?version=3"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bC-EQM7YHz0?version=3" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowScriptAccess="always" width="640" height="390"></object>Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-41027410389398467292011-08-07T09:26:00.000-05:002011-08-07T09:26:23.140-05:00Will There Be Zombies?by John Médaille <br />
Front Porch Republic<br />
<em>in Culture, High & Low,Economics & Empire</em><br />
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<em>Address to the Roman Forum, July 7, 2011, Gardone, Italy</em><br />
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As we all know, the end of the world is coming soon. No, I don’t mean the eschaton, the final event in which the Son returns all things to the Father. That will be, by all accounts, a very cinematic event, full of all sorts of special effects. It will be, no doubt, very entertaining for those fortunate enough to be raptured in time to get a ring-side seat to the festivities to enjoy the spectacle of suffering for all those left behind. However, it is an event I know nothing about—and certainly not the day and the hour—and even if I knew that, there is not much I could do about it. I would like to address a quite different sort of end, the end of our world. Now, while the eschaton will come but once, the end of the world in this sense is something that happens with appalling frequency, and is usually an appalling event. These events are, at a minimum, the loss of familiar things, the comfortable and customary things, and even when they are things that we do not particularly love, and may even especially hate, they are at least things that we are used to, and giving up such things can be wrenching.<br />
<a href="http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2011/07/will-there-be-zombies/">MORE...</a>Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-78034182178798967492011-08-07T08:39:00.002-05:002011-08-07T08:57:47.289-05:00What’s Good? Wherefore Ought?<strong>Editor's NOTE:</strong><br />
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In this time of moral anarchy and the Nihil, it is useful to revisit a more traditional Roman Catholic view of morality as Thaddeus Kozinski has offered in this excellent piece. The author teaches that the ancient Greeks, Plato and Aristotle produced the finest pre-Christian ethic. <br />
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St. Augustine then harmonized the teaching of Plato and orthdodox Christianity within the first centuries after the death of Christ. Much later, St. Thomas Aquinas was able to combine the teachings of Aristotle's ethic (preserved by the great Muslim scholars) with that of Augustine and delivered the most complete Christian ethic in what has become known as the Aristotelian/Thomistic synthesis--which has never been surpassed-either in the Enlightenment, in Modernity or post-Modernity. Were we to embrace the view offered by Thaddeus Kozinski, much of what ails our nation would be healed.<br />
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--Dr. J. P. Hubert<br />
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by Thaddeus J. Kozinski <br />
<em><a href="http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/05/3275">Public Discourse, Ethics, Law and the Common Good</a></em><br />
May 11, 2011<br />
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Only an ethics rooted in the divinely revealed truth of creation-as-gift and creator-as-love can coherently and adequately make sense of the universal experience of ought.<br />
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We all have had the experience of ought, of something that, at least in a subjective sense, renders our imminent action morally relevant, so that what we are about to do or not do is more than a mere question of what will be pleasing to us, socially beneficial, psychologically comfortable, or useful for some plan of action. But it is not only the sense of what is or is not right that we experience in the moral ought, but also what is good. What seems right also seems good, and if it did not, it would not seem right; indeed, it could not be right at all. Thus, the good and the right seem correlative and inseparable in experience, though we can parse them out upon reflection. So, how to understand the twofold character of our moral experience: What’s good? Wherefore ought?<br />
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There are, of course, innumerable accounts to be given of this universal experience, ranging from cavalier dismissal—as a psychological vestige of our ancestors’ primitive taboo culture that the Enlightenment began to expunge from our communal consciousness, though it has not quite succeeded—to robust embrace: as the voice of a righteous God in the depths of the soul, demanding that we act according to that righteousness in obedience to divine commandments. Somewhere in the middle of these is the Aristotelian, eudaimonistic interpretation of the moral ought as an impetus to intelligently and voluntarily act for the purpose of self-satisfaction, following our natural inclination to happiness. This is the inclination not so much to do right but to be good, which is to say, to follow the natural, rational path to self-fulfillment, perfection, and well-being. Depending upon one’s philosophical or cultural tastes, this could be psychological adjustment, a la stoicism or Sigmund Freud, or virtuous activity, a la Aristotle or Benjamin Franklin. Then there is the Kantian third-way, combining the ethos of both a divine-command and a well-being ethics, but leaving out the need for any actual divine command or feeling of well-being. In other words, “Follow reason, God’s internal command in the soul, and you will be rendered worthy for happiness. . . later”—case in point, Jack Bauer from the television series 24 is a sort of contemporary hyper-Kantian, doing his duty without quite knowing it’s his duty, and without quite knowing if he’ll ever be happy.<br />
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Which theoretical and practical interpretation of the human experience of ought makes the most sense? It seems to me that there are two fundamental features of the experience that must be affirmed and explained. On the one hand, there is the sense of duty to the other, of the right—that something or someone outside or above me requires me to act in a certain way, regardless of my individual likes or dislikes, notwithstanding my understanding of how or whether the imminent act will contribute to my personal well-being, satisfaction of desire, or happiness. On the other hand, there is the sense of desire for self, of the good—the attraction, regardless of any sense of duty I might also have, to things in the world that I experience as desirable simply for me, as somehow related to my own happiness, which I pursue for their own sake.<br />
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Any explanation of the subjective experience of ought needs to encompass and synthesize both of these features. And herein lies the big problem, for these features appear to be mutually exclusive or at least in great tension with each other. If I am obliged to do something, whether this obligation comes from irrational taboo, social-contract convention, categorical reason, or God’s will, I cannot, at the same time, do this action for the sole purpose of my well-being, perfection, or subjective satisfaction. But if I feel obliged as well as attracted, then I cannot be doing what I ought to do merely because I am attracted to it personally. For then my happiness has become my duty. Conversely, if I find that I am personally attracted to what I also consider my duty, then I am not doing it because it is my duty, for my duty has now become for me a desirable good and thus a means to my personal happiness.<br />
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The phenomenological dialectic of right and good could be resolved if we could understand what is at the heart of human moral experience; but to understand this heart, we require more than what, unaided, human moral experience and purely philosophical speculation on this experience can provide. My argument for this conclusion is thus: What the duty aspect of moral experience suggests is the reality of justice, which is inherently relational and thus irreducible to any interpretation of morality as mere personal fulfillment. What the happiness aspect of moral experience suggests is the reality of desire-for-the-good, which is inherently personal and thus irreducible to an interpretation of morality as mere social or divine obligation. So, any explanation of the moral ought must include both others-related justice and self-related desire, and this is precisely what is provided by a theological ethics of creation and gift: If we are creatures, then we are inherently relational, with any actions related, above all, to our creator; and if creation is a gift, then we are supposed to enjoy creation as a good. And if God Himself, in essence, is a relation of three persons eternally bestowing upon each other and enjoying each other’s perfect divine goodness—God giving and receiving Himself—and if humans are made in the image and likeness of this Trinitarian gift-friendship, then we have the definitive—though still inexhaustibly mysterious—archetype in which the paradoxical human experience of simultaneous goodness and oughtness can ultimately be resolved.<br />
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If God created us and the world for a purpose, then we are obliged, by definition and through our very nature, to act according to this purpose. Even if we have been given free will to decide whether or not to correspond with our natural telos, we are not really capable of re-creating or re-designing ourselves; that is, we are inextricably purpose-fulfilling creatures, in the very fabric of our existence. And if God created the world as a gift, in imitation of His own gift-giving and -receiving essence, then our main purpose as the only creatures that can receive a gift qua gift—and not solely as something desirable—is simply to receive this gift as any gift is meant to be received, in love and gratitude for both the gift and the giver. In short, we are obliged to be happy, because we have a duty to love the gift of a divinely bestowed, happy-making existence, and we are encouraged to desire happiness for its own sake, because that is precisely the way we justly show our gratitude for the good gift we have been given.<br />
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So, am I saying that only an ethics rooted in the divinely revealed truth of creation-as-gift and creator-as-love can coherently and adequately make sense of the universal experience of ought? Indeed I am, though I think that purely philosophical explanations are similarly indispensable. Creation is replete with secondary causality, and grace and revelation can only complete nature and reason if the latter have a relative integrity and intelligibility. I am open to any account, whether philosophical or theological, that can do justice to our experience, but I have not come across any yet that both attract and oblige my soul the way the Augustinian-Thomistic theological account does.<br />
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Plato and Aristotle’s thought, if it could ever be adequately synthesized, is the most attractive and obligatory pre-Christian, purely philosophical account of ethical experience, combining both a divine-order sense of obligation (Plato’s Good) and a happiness-first-and-last sensibility (Aristotle’s phronemon). The synthesis of this account with Christian revelation is to be found in Augustine’s Platonic-Christian and St. Thomas’s Augustinian-Aristotelian ethics. But we need, most of all, an account for today, which means a synthesis of all these pagan and Christian intellectual treasures with the legitimate speculative and practical advances of secular modernity—such as the dignity of the human person, the extraordinariness of ordinary human life, the integrity and relative autonomy of the temporal social and political order, and institutions such as representative government, human rights tribunals, and freedom of religion—rightly understood. And we must add to this the insights of postmodernism, such as the tradition-and-history-constituted character of ethical enquiry, the bankruptcy of the Enlightenment “view-from-nowhere,” and the myth of the secular.<br />
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<em>Thaddeus J. Kozinski is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College. </em>Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-59068412368960729882011-08-05T10:30:00.001-05:002011-08-05T10:50:12.015-05:00Hidden Agenda: The "Debt Crisis Plan" was to Strike a Blow at the National Social Safety NetBy Shamus Cooke <br />
<em><a href="http://www.blogger.com/URL%20of%20this%20article:%20www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25862">Global Research </a></em><br />
August 2, 2011 <br />
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The debt crisis has been averted and people across the globe are breathing sighs of relief. <br />
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But in the back rooms of the US Congress, politicians are celebrating for a different reason. It's the kind of celebration that erupts when a group executes a complicated plan to perfection. The objective in this case was to strike the first blows against the national social safety net without encountering massive resistance. Mission half-accomplished thus far. <br />
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Half accomplished because only half of the $2.5 billion in cuts have been decided on. The other half will be sent to a bi-partisan committee where, according to the White House Fact Sheet: <br />
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"... the committee will consider responsible entitlement [Social Security and Medicare] and tax reform [cuts to entitlement programs]. This means putting all the priorities of both parties on the table – including both entitlement reform [Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid] and revenue-raising tax reform.” <br />
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If the committee fails to agree on the cuts, they would be automatically triggered, and Medicare would be the target: "...any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side." This means that fewer doctors would accept Medicare patients or they would provide fewer services to Medicare beneficiaries. <br />
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When it comes to cutting Social Security and Medicare, the Democrats are Republicans are only trying to get their foot into the door. Nevertheless, the potential cuts will have a massive impact on the millions of Americans who depend on these vital services. And if these cuts are allowed to happen unopposed, the possibility of future, more dramatic cuts is certain. <br />
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Equally bad is that the budget deal makes the unemployment situation even worse. In writing about the effect the cuts would have on employment, a Moody’s analyst predicted that:<br />
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"The deal announced last night calls for a yearly average of $240 billion in cuts over the next decade. Very roughly, that suggests the new plan would cost around 1.6 million jobs per year during that time. [!]" (August 1st, 2011). <br />
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This noxious level of contempt for working people was the product of a manufactured crisis, with Democrats and Republicans playing along. How did Obama and the Democrats essentially push through the long-term objectives of the Republican Party? Author Michael Hudson explains on Democracy Now: <br />
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"... There has to be a crisis. Now, in reality, there is no crisis at all. In reality, raising the debt ceiling has been done for a hundred years automatically. There is no connection between raising the debt ceiling and arguing over tax policy. Tax policy takes many years to work out. All of a sudden, Mr. Obama is going along with the charade of saying, "Wait a minute, let’s create a crisis."... And Wall Street doesn’t like real crises, so there’s an artificial non-crisis that Obama is treating as a crisis so that he can put forth the recommendations of the Deficit Reduction Commission to get rid of Social Security that he has supported all along." (July 22nd, 2011). <br />
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Thus, it's not true that Obama was "held hostage" by the Republicans. If he told the country only half of what Mr. Hudson explained on Democracy Now, the Republicans would have folded instantly. If Obama would have told the country that the Republicans wanted massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare, instead of purposely hiding these issues, Republican voters would have converged on Capitol Hill with torches and pitchforks. Instead, Obama went along with the charade; because in order for it to succeed, he was required to play a leading role in the drama. <br />
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Liberal groups and the major labor federations -- AFL-CIO and Change to Win -- have given a left cover to Obama's far-right policies, wrongly blaming only the Republicans every step of the way. But this willful blindness has its limits. These groups intend to "get out the vote" for Obama in 2012 while ignoring all the damage he's done to working families, while they also ignore all the promises Obama made to them and didn't keep last time. <br />
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The rank-and-file members of labor unions and liberal groups are among the million of Americans suffering under Obama's economic policies and will not follow their leaders like lemmings over the cliff for Obama's next presidential run. There will be a profound lack of rank-and-file volunteers to campaign for Obama, even as labor union leaders throw away their members’ dues money for the campaign. And because fewer members will campaign for Obama, he will feel less inclined to reward them after (or if) he wins. Instead, he'll again reward Wall Street, meaning, he'll continue to take from working people and give to the rich, further exacerbating the problem. <br />
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To change this downward spiral for labor and liberal groups a new approach is desperately needed, and can be started in two steps: 1) Put forth independent demands. 2) Wage a real fight for these demands. The most immediate demands for the majority of people are job creation and saving Social Security, Medicare, and the broader safety net including Medicaid. These demands require that revenue be raised by taxing the rich and corporations, since no other group can afford any taxes, and inequality continues to skyrocket. <br />
<br />
There is a direct link between the decades-long lowering of taxes on the wealthy and corporations and deficits rising on the national and state level. Economist Richard Wolff explains on Democracy Now:<br />
<br />
"We’re running a deficit because the people who run this society would like us to deal with our economic problems, not by taxing those who have it, the way we used to, but instead by endlessly borrowing from them. And now the ultimate irony, we’ve borrowed so much as a nation from the rich and the corporations, they now are not so sure they want to continue to lend to us, because we’re so deeply in debt. And they want us instead to go stick it to poor people and sick people instead. It’s an extraordinary moment in our history as a nation." (July 29th, 2011). <br />
<br />
So instead of directly taxing the very rich and corporations, we are borrowing money from them with interest. Much of the money we are borrowing from them was given to them via the bank bailouts; they were given free taxpayer money and lent the money back to the taxpayers, while demanding that programs that benefit working people be slashed! This extraordinary moment requires extraordinary action from working class organizations, including mass demonstrations as part of a sustained, independent campaign. <br />
<br />
The deficit reduction plan worked out by the cooperation between Republicans and Democrats is not set in stone. Massive, ongoing protests have a tendency to make politicians re-think their policies.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-48356559059608183432011-08-03T14:12:00.001-05:002011-08-03T14:14:28.334-05:00Debt Ceiling Deal Trickery: A Catalyst for an Uprising?By: Kevin Gosztola<br />
<em><a href="http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2011/08/02/debt-ceiling-deal-trickery-a-catalyst-for-an-uprising/">dissenter.firedoglake.com</a></em><br />
Tuesday August 2, 2011 5:10 pm <br />
<br />
The outcome of the debt ceiling talks is a foregone conclusion. An agreement has been established. The Obama Administration and GOP leaders came together and came up with a deal that would satisfy enough of Republican congressman beholden to the right wing economic libertarian “Tea Party.” Democratic leaders were stuck in the middle, trying to advance a plan that would be less destructive to the people of this country yet President Barack Obama gave very little support always indicating he was for a compromise with Speaker John Boehner, who was, as is typical, being driven by corporate interests and the faction of people Vice President Joe Biden would later accuse of “acting like terrorists.”<br />
<br />
It was scripted political theater from the beginning to end and had a predictable outcome. One might recall the American people were given a preview of the debt ceiling talks back in December when Obama announced a tax cut deal that validated the GOP’s hostage taking strategy. Middle class tax cuts, jobless benefits and other items were held hostage until Obama committed to extending tax cuts for the top 2% of Americans.<br />
<br />
Then, too, a bipartisan deal was achieved. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned giving into “blackmailers” would ensure demands in the future. “As long as Republicans believe that Mr. Obama will do anything to avoid short-term pain, they’ll have every incentive to keep taking hostages. If the president will endanger America’s fiscal future to avoid a tax increase, what will he give to avoid a government shutdown?”<br />
<br />
On the debt deal, Krugman argues Obama surrendered. He agreed to “big spending cuts, with no increase[s] in revenue.” Democrats and Obama decided Republicans might have an “incentive” to make cuts next time around. He further emboldened corporate and special interests that have a vice grip on the American government. Worse, Obama signed off on a clear subversion of democracy by advocating for the establishment of a 12-person “Super Congress,” a panel of members in Congress that will cut at least $1.2 trillion and decide what to cut.<br />
<br />
This is not surrender though. This is what President Obama wants. This is making government “work.” This is making certain gridlock doesn’t get in the way of Obama’s commitment to demonstrating he has “changed” Washington by making it “work.” And, to better understand the outcome of this bipartisan deal, one should remember what comedian George Carlin said about the word “bipartisan” meaning a much larger-than-usual deception is being carried out.<br />
<br />
<strong>Whose Delusionary and Uninformed? </strong><br />
<br />
Those arguing that Obama had no choice but to bow to pressure from the GOP or Tea Party are significantly misinformed or willfully ignorant. There was a legal remedy for all of this. He did not have to risk more economic injustice in this country and put social programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on the chopping block. He had the opportunity to raise the debt ceiling in December but chose not to because he thought he would like to have a second chance to prove he can govern without being extorted.<br />
<br />
Those suggesting the people of this country have to find something positive in this outcome are even shallower. Defense spending will not face deeper cuts than Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Or, if defense spending does face cuts, it will likely mean defense spending cuts come out of an extra $50 billion deal negotiated outside of the debt ceiling talks and the Defense Department will most likely end up with more funding and resources than before the debt ceiling “crisis” began to be manufactured by the political class in Washington.<br />
<br />
Ezra Klein of The Washington Post seems to think that Obama’s strategy is “brilliant.” He has attached a double trigger that means defense contracting cuts and Bush tax cuts could go into effect if Republicans don’t “compromise.” What theater ensemble has Klein been watching move about on the political stage in Washington? As Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone has written, the Democrats did not fight the GOP at all. They could not fight the GOP at all because they would have impeded the Obama Administration’s ability to cut a deal favorable to the GOP.<br />
<br />
“[Democrats] made a show of a tussle for a good long time — as fixed fights go, you don’t see many that last into the 11th and 12th rounds, like this one did — but at the final hour, they let out a whimper and took a dive,” Taibbi concludes. “We probably need to start wondering why this keeps happening. Also, this: if the Democrats suck so bad at political combat, then how come they continue to be rewarded with such massive quantities of campaign contributions?” Adding, “Who spends hundreds of millions of dollars for what looks, on the outside, like rank incompetence?”<br />
<br />
The answer is a few million liberals, who get involved in organizations like MoveOn and Organizing for America (the worst of the two) get involved in spending millions of dollars on what appears to be “rank incompetence.” The answer is unions with weak leaders like Richard Trumka of AFL-CIO, who pretend to be inching toward starting an independent political movement then turn coward and go back to business as usual.<br />
<br />
<strong>What Looks Like “Rank Incompetence” is Intentional</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
What has been on display really isn’t “rank incompetence” at all. As many people who write and discuss politics are realizing, the Democrats’ role in the debt ceiling crisis was to not fight back against the GOP or the Obama Administration. It was to concede when necessary.<br />
<br />
And, atrociously, the final moment of rolling over and playing dead for corporations and the wealthy in America came just when the Democratic Party seemingly used Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who was shot in the head in Arizona by a sociopath in January. She was trotted out to vote for the deal. Standing on the House floor, Giffords’ condition was exploited to ensure that not enough Democrats would vote against the deal.<br />
<br />
Is this really acceptable to people who support Obama? Is this really acceptable to people who are considering voting for Democrats in 2012 because they think that will remedy the continued onslaught on the poor, working, and middle class of America by the Tea Party, the shock troops for corporate and special interests in America?<br />
<br />
It is no longer possible to tell someone with a straight face that Obama hasn’t continued the Bush “war on terror” policies that have a brought forth an assault on civil liberties. It should no longer be possible for someone to look another in the face and argue Obama is any better than Bush.<br />
<br />
Not a single person has gone to jail for being criminally involved in the collapse of the economy in 2008. Jeff Cohen of FAIR points out Obama has consistently put “corporate deregulation and greed ahead of the needs of most Americans.”<br />
<br />
Finally, the Republicans will not be beat back by finding Democratic candidates for primaries. The system is too broken for that to remedy much of anything. The debates should not center around which personalities will lead us the way forward. The focus should be on people like you—the people who are tuned into the political moment, who nod in agreement with the words of this post and other much more insightful posts here in other sectors of the blogosphere.<br />
<br />
<strong>“The Outrage Must Come from You”</strong><br />
<br />
Keith Olbermann had it right on “Countdown” last night as he outlined what he called the “four great hypocrisies” of this debt ceiling deal:<br />
<br />
Where is the outrage over these great hypocrisies? Do you expect it to come from a corrupt and corrupted media for whom access is of greater importance then criticizing the failure of a political party or defending those who don’t buy newspapers or can’t leap website pay walls or could not afford cable TV? Do you expect it to come from a cynical and manipulative political structure? Do you expect it from those elected officials who no longer know anything of government or governance but only perceive how to get elected or how to pose in front of a camera and pretend to be leaders? Do you expect it from politicians themselves who will merely calculate whether or not it’s right based on whether or not it will get them more contributions? Do you expect it will come from the great middle ground of this country with a population obsessed with entertainment, video games, social media, sports and media?<br />
<br />
<strong>Where is the outrage to come from? From you!</strong><br />
<br />
Olbermann proceeded to declare that the people must become organized, unified and hell bent like the corporations which are organized, unified and hell bent on crushing the people of this country. He called on Americans to “find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960s and early 1970s and we must protest this deal and all the goddamn deals to come, in the streets.” And, he got specific urging general strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation, takeovers, etc.<br />
<br />
To the cynical who are saying strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation, takeovers, etc can never happen, that Americans never engage in resistance and will not engage in resistance to save this country from permanent ruin, there are groups who have already been mounting efforts. This moment will only act as a catalyst for ensuring the number of people, who participate in the action, increase tremendously.<br />
<br />
Occupy Wall Street is building up for September 17, calling for a “Tahrir moment,” which would involve citizens flooding into lower Manhattan to set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades, etc to occupy Wall Street. Using the means of communication that exists today, which radicals of the 1960s did not have, they intend to harness the power of a plurality of voices and demand “democracy not corporatocracy” right from the belly of the beast.<br />
<br />
US Day of Rage (USDOR), which has endorsed Occupy Wall Street, is also working to fuel principled nonviolent protest on September 17th. A USDOR organizer explains the initiative is focused on challenging the illegitimate US government, which does not currently express the will of the people through free and fair elections. The initiative calls for nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience and aims to build toward a federal protest at the US capitol.<br />
<br />
Seize DC is calling for an action on September 10 to reclaim civil liberties and rights that citizens have lost in this country. The organizers condemn “the seeking of permits, the placing in quarantined zones, the appropriation of ‘free speech’ and the pro forma ‘right to dissent,’ treated as a purely formal and meaningless expression” that has come to curb the ability of any social movement to have an impact in this country. Those behind the action find they do not need permission for free speech or the right to assembly and will not submit to having their protest cordoned off by a “murderous and tyrannical oligarchy.” They intend to “seize” DC—capture the “attention of the city and the nation so that its policies of seize and destroy may end.”<br />
<br />
October 2011 is calling on people to “stop the machine” and “create a new world.” On October 6, they will begin an occupation in Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, and will not leave until the people there are comfortable leaving. October 2011 organizer Kevin Zeese says they will decide what demands to make, what first steps the government must show they intend to take, before they ultimately leave. They intend to push the government to take notice of the people in Freedom Plaza and following the initial action there will be follow-up actions to continue to democratize the country.<br />
<br />
There are many initiatives going on in the country. Protests are happening every day and the people are coming out to show their leaders they are angry and outraged. Zeese concludes, “People are all reaching the same conclusion together. There is a group consciousness that is developing that the dysfunctional government that’s corrupted by corporate dollars is not acceptable anymore.”<br />
<br />
A laundry list of civil liberties have been lost. Constitutional rights have been systematically violated. (The Dissenter, in its first weeks of operation, has brought forth this reality in multiple posts.)<br />
<br />
Resistance efforts aim to turn back the assault. Zeese rightfully suggests that the way you gain constitutional rights and civil liberties back is that you use them. Like exercising a muscle, he says, the more you use civil liberties, the stronger they get in society.<br />
<br />
<strong>Be Cynical—It Will Only Please the Powerful in This Country</strong><br />
<br />
Nobody can say people aren’t mounting a struggle to prevent this country from becoming a permanent oligarchy. No person can suggest that there is no effort to end the self-perpetuation of the project, which far too many hypocritically engage in while at the same time complaining about the way they are consistently shafted.<br />
<br />
The Tunisia revolution, the first and second uprisings in Egypt, and the growing protests in Europe didn’t begin as strong as they are today. The challenging of austerity and autocracy in government didn’t begin with millions and millions of people instantly shaking the foundations of government. It took a few people finally deciding enough was enough. It took citizens entering a public square and deciding they had reached their breaking point with the power structure of society and weren’t going to take it anymore.<br />
<br />
Blacks and white abolitionists didn’t wait for the country to reach their level of consciousness when they took action for emancipation from slavery. They took the lead. Women didn’t wait for the country to reach their level of consciousness when they took action for equal rights. They took the lead. Black people didn’t wait for the country to reach their level of consciousness when they took action against Jim Crow laws and beat back inequality and injustice. They took the lead.<br />
<br />
Those who don’t get it won’t get it and cannot be expected to get it. They may get it once they see people in the streets. But, the people who understand the objective situation the country is in have an obligation and duty to take action. The resistance is called for and justified. No act of rebellion will be wasted. All outlets for enacting influence on power have been closed down and stopped up by the congressional-media-military-security complex. If the state of society to you is abhorrent, the answer is to get out in the streets and help reinforce the groups that are engaged in efforts for radically changing society.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-86755031775465933732011-08-01T17:31:00.001-05:002011-08-01T17:33:12.570-05:00The US Dictatorship and its White House Servant ‘President’by Finian Cunningham <br />
<em><a href="http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25853">Global Research</a></em><br />
August 1, 2011 <br />
<br />
If there is one thing that the office of President Barack Obama demonstrates it is that democracy does not exist in the United States. This may seem a rather outlandish statement. For many people, the fact that the 44th president is the first black man to preside over the White House – with its American colonial-style architecture – is a tribute to the triumph of US democracy. <br />
<br />
But many other more telling facts indicate that Obama is but a figurehead of an unelected government in the US. This unelected power of corporate elites – commercial, financial, military – governs with the same core policies regardless of who is sitting in the White House. Whether these policies are on social, economic or foreign matters, the elected president must obey the direction ordained by the unelected elite. That kind of untrammeled power structure conforms more closely in practice to dictatorship, not democracy. <br />
<br />
As Michael Hudson and Ellen Brown reveal in their analyses of the US budget debacle, <strong>Obama is pathetically doing the bidding of Wall Street – much like an errand boy [1] [2]. </strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
Brown writes: “The debt crisis was created, not by a social safety net bought and paid for by the taxpayers, but by a banking system taken over by Wall Street gamblers. The gamblers lost their bets and were bailed out at the expense of the taxpayers; and if anyone should be held to account, it is these gamblers. <br />
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“The debt ceiling crisis is a manufactured one, engineered to extort concessions that will lock the middle class in debt peonage for decades to come. Congress is empowered by the Constitution to issue the money it needs to pay its debts.” <br />
<br />
Obama’s servile toeing of Wall Street’s line is not the behavior of a free leader boldly defending the interests of the people and the greater good. Rather, <strong>his behaviour is that of one doing what he is told to do – and doing it with grateful deference. </strong><br />
<br />
In this way, of course, Obama is hardly different from his predecessors. But of difference is just how blatant <strong>the White House is now appearing to function as a mere tool of the rich and powerful elite. </strong><br />
<br />
The irony is that Obama’s election was presented as a potent symbol of American democracy; the truth is that the two-party system has become a threadbare cover for immense feebleness when it comes to serving the diktat of elite power as opposed to the good of the people. “The most powerful office in the world” would be more accurately referenced as “the most feeble purveyor of elite interests”. <br />
<br />
Obama’s presence in the White House indulges a superficial moral/political correctness while the masters whip us all into austere servitude. <br />
<br />
<strong>The US “war on terror” is another illustration of America’s dictatorship of the elite – and Obama’s pathetic servile role of carrying out the masters’ orders in defiance of the will of the people. </strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
Recall that Obama’s bid for presidential election in 2008 was avowedly based on ending the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He also denounced his incumbent rival George W. Bush over the use of special powers that enabled such aberrations as the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp and a host of draconian home security policies infringing on civil rights <br />
<br />
Obama also signaled in his inaugural speech – reiterated again soon after in Cairo – that under his watch the US was resetting foreign policy – turning away from the militarist policies of Bush to a more enlightened approach for settling conflicts with the Muslim World and Iran in particular. “If they unclench their fist, we will extend our hand,” Obama declared with seemingly heartfelt eloquence. <br />
<br />
But on every count, Obama has reneged on his supposed opposition to the US “war on terror”. Indeed, under his watch, the US has expanded its militarist foreign policy – which is apparently predicated on the belief that “western democracy is threatened by Islamic extremism”. <strong>Obama has done nothing to roll back draconian home security policies, indeed appears to have extended them</strong>. And he continues his predecessor’s deception of conflating Iran and its alleged nuclear ambitions as part of this phony “Islamic extremists” narrative. <br />
<br />
<strong>To perform such a disgraceful U-turn on so many election promises, the presidency of Barack Obama is clear proof that the holder of office in the White House is not the one who is setting policy – rather, he is following policy that is set by unelected others. </strong><br />
<br />
When news broke about the massacre in Norway where more than 70 people were killed in a twin bomb and gun attack, Obama reacted like an automaton of the unelected power system, instead of like an independent, reasonable political leader. Even though it was clear within hours of the atrocity that the perpetrator was a blond-haired Norwegian with fascist and deeply Islamophobic views, nevertheless Obama reacted immediately to present it as an act of Islamic terrorism. <br />
<br />
Speaking from the White House, Obama said: “It's a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring, and that we have to work co-operatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks.” <br />
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The president may not have used the words “Islamic terrorism” but it is clear that he was invoking the massacre as part of the “war on terror” which is predicated on the notion of Islamic terrorism. <br />
<br />
In this mindset, Obama was not alone. British Prime Minister David Cameron moved into action stations, saying that British intelligence would help their Norwegian counterparts to track down the culprits – again implying that the perpetrators were part of an international organization – which in war on terror code means an Islamic organization. <br />
<br />
The US and British news media also jumped to the conclusion that the Norwegian attacks must have something to with Al Qaeda or some other “Jihadist” group. <br />
<br />
That such a widespread and erroneous reflex response from Western political leaders and news media – the so-called free press – can be elicited so uncritically shows how trenchantly the war on terror and its Islamophobic mindset are embedded. <br />
<br />
The consequences of this are deeply disturbing. For a start, such a mindset of the Western political and media establishment can only lead to further Islamophobia in these societies. There were reports of hate attacks against ordinary Muslims across Europe immediately after the Norway atrocity, no doubt caused by the malign and erroneous way that politicians and the media attributed the incident to Islamists. <br />
<br />
Even more disturbing is that the war on terror mindset fomented by Western governments and media over the past 10 years has led to the creation of lunatic fascist psychopaths like Anders Behring Breivik who carried out the Norway mass murder. Breivik and others like him think that Europe and the US must be defended from some kind of Muslim threat. This kind of logic does not conjure from thin air. It is rather the logical conclusion of the war on terror mindset that Western governments and news media have pushed down the throats of their citizens for a decade. <br />
<br />
The sad part is that the majority of Western citizens are not convinced by the phony crusading of their governments and media, nor of the alleged threat of Islamic extremists. Most people realize that <strong>whatever Islamic extremists operate, they are either a creation of Western intelligence or a backlash against Western imperialism</strong>. That is why Obama’s avowed election promises to end America’s criminal wars and reset foreign policy on a more reasonable, democratic footing got him elected. <br />
<br />
The even sadder part is that as Obama’s ineffectual election shows, the US (and its Western lackeys) is being driven further and further into bankrupting, criminal wars of aggression that will cause more victims of violence and social mayhem at home and abroad. And it’s all because <strong>democracy in the US (and elsewhere in the West) is non-existent. The US is a dictatorship</strong>. And Mr Obama is too ineffectual (save for the masters) and irrelevant to be even loosely called its dictator. <br />
<br />
<strong>NOTES </strong><br />
<br />
[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25825 <br />
[2] http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25842Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-61228051071257022882011-08-01T12:55:00.001-05:002011-08-01T12:58:00.733-05:0036-Year Congressman John Conyers Calls for Protest Against the Debt Deal: “Thousands of People [Should Mass] In Front Of The White House To Protest ThisMonday, August 1, 2011 <br />
<a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/08/long-time-conressman-calls-for-protests.html">Washingtons blog</a><br />
<br />
36-Year Congressman John Conyers Calls for Protest Against the Debt Deal: “Thousands of People [Should Mass] In Front Of The White House To Protest This”<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Op66HTJdf-U" width="640"></iframe><br />
<br />
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri) said of the debt "compromise":<br />
<br />
It looks like a Satan sandwich.<br />
<br />
Traditional conservatives such as Ron Paul are strongly opposed to the deal, and have warned Americans that this could spell the end of America as we know it.<br />
<br />
The debt deal is so bad that long-time (36-year) Congressman John Conyers is calling for people to march on the White House:<br />
<br />
We’ve got to educate the American people at the same time we educate the President of the United States. The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that. My response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this.<br />
<br />
(Conyers is right about Obama - not Republicans - initiating cuts to social security.)<br />
<br />
Why is the debt deal so bad?<br />
<br />
As I've previously noted, the deal would create a "super congress" which is an end-run around accountability to the voters and the constitution.<br />
<br />
As Chris Floyd writes today:<br />
<br />
[The] extraordinary "special committee" or "Super Congress" ... is an unaccountable politburo which will be able to circumvent all normal democratic (and republican) principles and issue budget-slashing, tax-cutting legislation that cannot be debated or amended, but simply approved or rejected by the rest of the now-powerless representatives and senators.<br />
<br />
That's not all. If the politburo -- handpicked members split evenly between the two gangs of thieves and poltroons that now hold sway on Capitol Hill -- can't agree on just how much they want to gut the budget and cut taxes for the rich, why then, this will trip a series of "triggers" which will automatically start gutting, slashing and cutting, without any vote by the democratically elected representatives whatsoever. And surely it would be superfluous in me to point out that these unaccountable "superpowers" will soon stretch to cover other areas of legislation beyond budgeting and taxes.<br />
<br />
Behind all the flim-flammery of this manufactured "crisis", we are watching the creation of a new form of government -- or rather, the further mutation of the new form of government that the United States has been crawling toward for a long time. We called it a "neo-feudal oligarchy backed by a militarist police state" here the other day. No doubt there are many other ways you could describe this murderous, ravenous, lopsided monstrosity of a system. But the one thing you cannot call it is a "republic".<br />
<br />
But at least the compromise will allow us to get our ballooning debt under control by making painful but necessary slashes to the budget, right?<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, no.<br />
<br />
As <em>Business Insider</em> reports:<br />
<br />
The “historic, bipartisan compromise” reached to raise the debt limit does not end the struggle to reign in the federal deficit — in fact, it pushes the most difficult decisions off into the future.<br />
<br />
More surprising, the debt deal actually cuts almost nothing now–it just promises future cuts that may or may not materialize.<br />
<br />
There are very few specific cuts in the deal — and the $1 trillion in immediate cuts are almost entirely constituted of caps on future spending. And those caps are not required to be honored by future congresses.<br />
<br />
In short, for the past month, Congress has been arguing about little more than an agreement to reach an agreement at some point in the future. Your tax dollars at work.<br />
<br />
And the debt deal won't preserve America's AAA credit rating. At most, it will buy a couple of months to a year, and then we'll be downgraded.<br />
<br />
Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office scores the compromise as providing only half of the cuts required by Standard & Poor's to avoid a debt downgrade (and concludes that only 2% of the total cuts will occur prior to the 2012 presidential election).<br />
<br />
In other words, Washington is once again doing what it has been doing for years ... kicking the can down the road ... and trashing the Constitution. <br />
<br />
No wonder even long-time Congressman Conyers is calling for the American people to march on the White House.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-64115349383328264742011-08-01T10:55:00.001-05:002011-08-01T10:57:12.815-05:00The President SurrendersBy PAUL KRUGMAN <br />
<br />
August 01, 2011 <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=3">"NY Times"</a> -- A deal to raise the federal debt ceiling is in the works. If it goes through, many commentators will declare that disaster was avoided. But they will be wrong. <br />
<br />
For <strong>the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster,</strong> and not just for President Obama and his party. <strong>It will damage an already depressed economy</strong>; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, <strong>it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.<br />
<br />
<strong>The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further</strong>. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It doesn’t work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of the historical record.<br />
<br />
Indeed, <strong>slashing spending while the economy is depressed won’t even help the budget situation much, and might well make it worse</strong>. On one side, interest rates on federal borrowing are currently very low, so spending cuts now will do little to reduce future interest costs. On the other side, <strong>making the economy weaker now will also hurt its long-run prospects, which will in turn reduce future revenue</strong>. So those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker.<br />
<br />
And then there are <strong>the reported terms of the deal, which amount to an abject surrender on the part of the president</strong>. First, there will be big spending cuts, with no increase in revenue. Then a panel will make recommendations for further deficit reduction — and if these recommendations aren’t accepted, there will be more spending cuts.<br />
<br />
Republicans will supposedly have an incentive to make concessions the next time around, because defense spending will be among the areas cut. But <strong>the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
In fact, <strong>Republicans will surely be emboldened by the way Mr. Obama keeps folding in the face of their threats. He surrendered last December, extending all the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered in the spring when they threatened to shut down the government; and he has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling</strong>. Maybe it’s just me, but I see a pattern here.<br />
<br />
Did the president have any alternative this time around? Yes.<br />
<br />
First of all,<strong> he could and should have demanded an increase in the debt ceiling back in December. </strong>When asked why he didn’t, he replied that he was sure that Republicans would act responsibly. Great call.<br />
<br />
And even now,<strong> the Obama administration could have resorted to legal maneuvering to sidestep the debt ceiling, using any of several options</strong>. In ordinary circumstances, this might have been an extreme step. But faced with the reality of what is happening, namely raw extortion on the part of a party that, after all, only controls one house of Congress, it would have been totally justifiable.<br />
<br />
<strong>At the very least, Mr. Obama could have used the possibility of a legal end run to strengthen his bargaining position</strong>. Instead, however, he ruled all such options out from the beginning.<br />
<br />
But wouldn’t taking a tough stance have worried markets? Probably not. In fact, <strong>if I were an investor I would be reassured, not dismayed, by a demonstration that the president is willing and able to stand up to blackmail on the part of right-wing extremists.</strong> Instead, he has chosen to demonstrate the opposite.<br />
<br />
Make no mistake about it, <strong>what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels</strong>.<br />
<br />
<strong>It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats,</strong> who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will.<br />
<br />
In the long run, however, Democrats won’t be the only losers. <strong>What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question</strong>. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-38352298111641935682011-07-31T10:53:00.001-05:002011-07-31T10:56:58.728-05:00The US Constitution Makes Default Illegal: What a Real President Would Do on August 1, 2011Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.<br />
<a href="http://tarpley.net/">TARPLEY.net</a><br />
July 27, 2011<br />
<br />
<strong>Editor's NOTE:</strong><br />
<br />
This fictional speech that Webster G. Tarpley has suggested President Obama make is <br />
fascinating. <br />
<br />
--Dr. J. P. Hubert<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>My fellow Americans:</strong><br />
<br />
I speak to you tonight in an hour of grave danger to our nation. As you know, within the next few hours our government is in danger of failing to make payments of interest and principal which the United States Treasury has contracted to make. In technical terms, we are not far away from beginning to default on payments associated with those US Treasury securities which represent the public debt of the United States. As part of the same crisis, there is now a threat to over 70 million checks which your government issues every month — payments which go to recipients of Social Security, to providers of health services under the Medicare program, to Medicaid beneficiaries, to our active-duty and retired military personnel, to our defense contractors, to our government employees — in short, to everyone who receives a benefit from the federal government, who works for the federal government, or who does business with the federal government.<br />
<br />
<strong>Default Means National Bankruptcy and World Chaos</strong><br />
<br />
A default of this kind means nothing less than national bankruptcy. Default is the essence of chaos and anarchy. It is a peril which we have successfully avoided during our entire existence as a nation, through a terrible civil war and the two world wars of the past century.<br />
<br />
The United States dollar continues to play the role of the world reserve currency. This means that the central banks on every continent have chosen to maintain large portions of their reserves in the form of US Treasury securities. This role has been slightly diminished in recent years, but it is substantially intact. For the US government to default on payments through the US Treasury would therefore provoke a radical devaluation of the central bank reserves of the entire globe, wiping out some central banks and leaving others critically weakened. This might lead to massive dumping of US Treasury securities, leading to a general world panic to which no asset class would remain immune. We might see a dramatic decline of the dollar. This would represent the disintegration of the current world financial system, and a breakdown crisis of economic activity of unthinkable proportions. This might happen immediately, or it might require months or even years to explode in its full fury. In any case, it would put the United States on the road to national decline.<br />
<br />
If you recall how financial markets seized up and ceased to function in the terrible days of September and October 2008, you have some inkling of the kind of catastrophic market climate that would be unleashed by the national bankruptcy of the United States. Borrowing, credit, mortgages, car financing, credit cards, and the like would not just require astronomical interest rates; many kinds of lending would disappear altogether. Millions more jobs would be lost.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Public Credit is an Asset for All Americans and for the World</strong><br />
<br />
The United States Treasury securities market, with its $1 trillion per day of turnover, represents a unique national asset for our country. It is a signal achievement of the American System of Political Economy founded by Alexander Hamilton. It is the broadest, deepest, and most liquid market in the world. It is capable of absorbing trillions of dollars of securities and turning them into cash within a few hours – a capability unique on this planet. Despite how indignant we all are about the abuses of Wall Street, it would be extremely unwise to permit the Treasury securities market to be wrecked by ideological fanatics. All the more so since the Treasury market is unique in the world, and its extinction would leave no currency whatsoever in a position to function as the reserve medium of the world. This would have terrible implications for world trade and investment.<br />
<br />
In short, our Treasury securities are the bedrock of all economic activity in this planet, and the common interest of humanity is well served by avoiding their chaotic insolvency.<br />
<br />
<strong>The “Tea Party Caucus”: Right-wing Anarchists Funded by Malefactors of Great Wealth</strong><br />
<br />
Why, many Americans may wonder, should this crisis exist today? Here it is useless to talk in euphemisms in order to appear conciliatory; it is now necessary to call things by their names. As a result of the current world economic and financial depression which began in 2007-2008, the extreme right wing of the Republican Party, now calling itself the Tea Party, has been energized and revitalized. They have also begun to receive large amounts of political funding, including from a sinister individual who is reported to be the richest man in New York City. These are the malefactors of great wealth about whom presidents of both parties have been warning you for over a century. The goal of these opulent backers of the so-called Tea Party is to eliminate taxation and regulation upon themselves and their private business interests, many of which are in direct conflict with the public good. The impact of this Tea Party on public opinion has been magnified out of all proportion by the collusion of corrupt media cartels; in reality, the supporters of the so-called Tea Party do not exceed about 15% of our population.<br />
<br />
<strong>Neo-Feudalism</strong><br />
<br />
Thanks to the economic royalists who support them, a Tea Party contingent numbering almost 90 members has entered the House of Representatives. Many are political novices. Many of them sincerely believe in the strange and un-American foreign doctrines of the Austrian school, according to which government is an unnecessary evil which needs to be abolished. It is entirely proper to see them as a species of right wing anarchist. The market, by contrast, they fetishize as infallible, and deserving of unbridled free reign over all the human affairs. They want a market without a government, something which has not existed in human affairs since the transition from the Old Stone Age to the Neolithic age, when the state emerged. The free market with no role whatsoever for government went out with Alley Oop the cave man, and it is not likely to return.<br />
<br />
And all too often, the market of which they speak turns out not to be free, but rather dominated by predatory cartels, monopolies, and oligopolies. They are devoted to the causes of deregulation, privatization, the abolition of trade unions, more privileges for the wealthy, and a race to the bottom among the states. The world for which they are striving resembles perhaps nothing so much as feudalism as seen in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire – and, like that anarchic chaos, it can only be described as A New Dark Age.<br />
<br />
Most especially, these right wing anarchists of the Tea Party hate the social safety net which incorporates the precious economic rights for which the struggles of the American people won recognition during the New Deal and the Great Society. I am referring of course to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, the Head Start Program, the WIC program of high-protein meals for expectant mothers and infants, and many more. I am also referring to the right to collective bargaining for wage earners in the public and private sectors alike, and other features of a humane modern society.<br />
<br />
Their reasons for this view read like a catalogue of the seven deadly sins, with pride, greed, rage, and envy in the lead. To these we must add class hatred, and also racism, since many of them are obsessed with the idea that their taxes are being spent to help minority groups.<br />
<br />
<strong>New Deal America Repudiates the Tea Party</strong><br />
<br />
The problem faced by the Tea Party Republicans is that two thirds to three quarters of the American people warmly support the social safety net created by the New Deal and the Great Society. A recent poll has also shown that fully 80% of Americans want tax rates on the super-rich to be increased. Despite so many years of radio ranting, venal professors, and merciless sloganeering by politicians, the American people continue to repudiate the ideological platform of the so-called Tea Party. There is no hope their program could ever get passed.<br />
<br />
Out of their despair that their ideological goals could ever be met through the democratic process, these wealthy individuals and their anarchist following have evolved a diabolical strategy. Their strategy is extortion. It is an attempt to place the United States government under duress. It is an attempt to mutilate, alter, and denature our Constitution through unconstitutional means.<br />
<br />
It is nothing short of an illegal coup d’etat.<br />
<br />
The Tea Party cloaks themselves in public as the greatest admirers of the U.S. Constitution. But in one concrete instance after another, we find that the Tea Party is at war with the Constitution.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Tea Party Hates the Constitution in Practice</strong><br />
<br />
Our Constitution speaks not once but twice about the general welfare. To the Tea Party, this is anathema, since they believe that government should serve the wealthy few.<br />
<br />
In terms of the issue at hand, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution specifies that the Congress shall have the power “To borrow money on the credit of the United States.”<br />
<br />
This is once again anathema to the Tea Party. In such a fundamental provision as this, enacted in response to the bitter lessons of ungovernability taught by the Articles of Confederation interlude, the Tea Party faction sets itself above the wisdom of the founders. The Tea Party would rewrite this provision to read that the Congress shall NOT have the power to borrow money on the credit of the United States, and the framers be damned.<br />
<br />
This is what they admit when they demand their so-called balanced budget amendment. Such an amendment would destroy the finely wrought mechanism of the separation of powers and its accompanying checks and balances, which have served us so well over the centuries. But it is also a subterfuge, since the Tea Party knows very well that this amendment has no chance of being approved by the Congress, nor by the states. Rather, it has included in their litany of cut, cap, and balance purely as a deal-breaker, to make absolutely sure that no possible settlement can be forthcoming in the time available. They are determined to make all negotiations fail.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Tea Party Goal is to Bankrupt the United States</strong><br />
<br />
The goal of the Tea Party faction of Congress is nothing less than the national bankruptcy of the United States, procured by forcing our default on the contractual and legal obligations of this government. They regard default and bankruptcy as positive goods, and indeed as indispensable steps on the path to the free market utopia they fondly imagine. Their reasoning is that, once the United States has gone bankrupt, it will henceforth be either prohibitively expensive or totally impossible for the Treasury to sell its bonds on the world financial markets. Therefore, payments on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs will have to be cut – not by law, but by the brute force of having no money.<br />
<br />
This they do in wartime, with some 160,000 troops in the field, many of them fighting determined enemies on the other side of the world.<br />
<br />
They claim they want predictabilty to allow businesses to create jobs, yet they court the greatest chaos and instability our nation has ever faced in our financial affairs – insolvency.<br />
<br />
These same Tea Party ideologues, still feigning a concern about the American people, have already sponsored legislation which would give foreign creditors — the Chinese, the Japanese, the Saudis, and others — top priority in payments made by the federal government, ahead of our military personnel. According to these bills, we can be sure that Americans whose lives depend on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will be dead last when disbursements are made. We can perhaps now see the real dimensions of the sinister plan with which we are confronted. By driving this government into bankruptcy, the Tea Party hopes to roll back the Constitution by wrecking the Congressional ability to borrow money as a practical matter, while at the same time destroying the entitlement programs which the most extreme Republicans have hated since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt.<br />
<br />
And not just Tea Party fanatics endorse this strategy. Indeed, it has the sympathy of rich elitists of all political stripes, including the academic and foundation left, who welcome the effort to strip away the economic rights of the American people.<br />
<br />
<strong>Default Spells Genocide Against the American People</strong><br />
<br />
This is a policy which threatens the very lives of millions of Americans. It raises the specter of genocide against our own people. And I have not become President of the United States to preside over genocide against Americans.<br />
<br />
I am not motivated by any ambition for the aggrandizement of the powers of the presidency. I have negotiated in good faith for months. The other side has not. I have offered reasonable concessions. Indeed, I have waited until now, when the clock reads five minutes to twelve, constantly hoping that the legislative process in Congress would yield an acceptable result. But now, with the specter of national bankruptcy in full view, and no reasonable outcome forthcoming, it is my responsibility to act. Since I sit in the seat that belonged to Washington and Lincoln and Roosevelt, it is my hope that my actions may be worthy of their heritage.<br />
<br />
<strong>In a Conflict Among Statutes, the Constitution Decides</strong><br />
<br />
I am faced first of all with a conflict among statutes passed by Congress. On the one hand there is the debt ceiling law, which states that the Total Public Debt Outstanding of the United States of America shall not exceed $14.294 trillion. Since our public debt reached that level on May 16, this statute could be interpreted as barring any further auctions of United States treasury bills, notes, and bonds. And if we cannot borrow money in this way, since our current income is inadequate to meet all our obligations, we are headed for default, bankruptcy, and, worst of all, social chaos.<br />
<br />
But this is not the only statute in the US Code. There are also other statutes to which I must pay attention. All public expenditure of the United States government, as you know, is carried out by law — by a law called the federal budget, which specifies what amounts are to be spent and on what. Every expenditure has to go through the Congress not once but twice — it must be authorized, and then it must be appropriated, and each of these requires the consent of the two houses of Congress and the signature of the president. I am now confronted with a series of expenditures which the current Fiscal Year 2011 budget, passed by Congress and signed into law by me, requires me to make. This includes the entire vast array of social safety net, defense, transportation, health, regulation, inspection, government employment, and other activities which I outlined above. I am under legal compulsion to make these expenditures.<br />
<br />
Concerning Treasury securities outstanding, each one of these is an explicit contract that the United States government will pay specific sums of interest and principal at specified dates. Respect from the sanctity of contracts also requires me to make every one of these payments, without exception.<br />
<br />
This is therefore my situation: on the one hand, the debt ceiling forbids me to borrow. On the other hand, the federal budget and the implied contracts represented by entitlements and Treasury securities require me to pay. Since tax revenue, partly because of recent and misguided legislation, is not adequate to make all of these payments, something has to give.<br />
<br />
It is obvious that, when two or more statutes conflict, we need to look to the Constitution itself for guidance as to which one will apply. Given the extraordinary attention which the Constitution gives the concept of the general welfare, this guiding principle needs always to be kept in mind. Beyond this, our founding document contains two especially relevant provisions. On the one hand, we find that it is Congress which has the power to borrow money. But on the other hand we also have the 14th amendment, section 4 which states:<br />
<br />
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”<br />
<br />
In other words, this country is not allowed to default. Default is unconstitutional. Default is illegal. Default is a federal crime.<br />
<br />
This is not an option which I can choose to exercise or ignore. It is not something I can invoke or not invoke. This is the Constitution talking. This provision binds me, and ought to bind the opposition in Congress, since they too have sworn to uphold the Constitution.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Debt Ceiling is Unconstitutional and Must Be Disregarded</strong><br />
<br />
This provision places upon the President the responsibility to guarantee the timely payment of all United States debt obligations, regardless of attempts to the contrary that might come from other organs of government, including Congress or, for that matter, the courts. These words make me the ultimate guarantor of the solvency of the United States, especially under emergency conditions in which other branches of government have failed to do this. I am the last backstop. The buck stops here.<br />
<br />
By contrast, the Constitution nowhere makes any reference to a debt limit. In fact, the first debt limit was instituted in 1917, less than a hundred years ago. Somehow we got through our first century and a quarter of national life, conquered the frontier, won the Civil War, and created the world’s greatest industrial power without any need for a debt ceiling.<br />
<br />
In my considered judgment, and in the light of Amendment 14, Section 4, of the U.S. Constitution, a statutory debt ceiling is therefore unconstitutional. And all competent constitutional jurisprudence agrees that the president must not be bound by legislation which the courts are likely to find unconstitutional. This is all the more true in the present acute crisis.<br />
<br />
Accordingly, I have issued an executive order directing the Secretary of the Treasury to resume Treasury auctions today, August 1, 2011, with a view to maintaining the uninterrupted ability of the United States to meet all of its financial obligations, budget and debt, foreign and domestic, without exception. The full faith and credit of our country will be maintained.<br />
<br />
I cordially invite the Congress to approve and validate this decision ex post facto.<br />
<br />
If your child is in Head Start, it will remain open. If you rely on Social Security, this means you will get your check. If your life depends on Medicare, you can rest assured that your doctors and hospitals will be paid on time so that they can continue their useful activity. If you are living in a nursing home and require Medicaid, those payments will also be available. If you are a member of the military, or a government employee of any kind, you will receive your salary on time. If you are a private firm doing business as a contractor with the government of the United States, you will be able to meet your payroll. If you are carrying out medical research or other scientific research funded by a US government grant, you can be assured that this support will not be interrupted. If you are a person or institution or government anywhere in the world who has purchased United States Treasury securities, you will be paid every penny, on time. If you want to buy a United States Savings Bond or cash one in, you can go ahead and do it.<br />
<br />
Those intent on bankrupting the government of the United States and pitching our country into chaos may attempt to reverse this decision in the courts. I have directed the Solicitor General of the United States to prepare to refute their arguments. Since our constitutional position is strong, I have no doubt that we will prevail.<br />
<br />
Some will say that the debt ceiling has been around for almost a century, and that so many precedents should not be overturned. That kind of thinking would leave us in bondage to judicial monstrosities like Plessy v. Ferguson, which validated racial segregation, or the infamous Dred Scott decision, which said that skin color was the basis for denying people rights given by God and natural law, and recognized by the Constitution. It will not be the first time we have fixed what turned out to be a terrible mistake.<br />
<br />
Others in the House of Representatives bent on driving our nation into default have already announced their intention of impeaching me over this issue. I welcome their attack and the opportunity it will give to further clarify these great issues of the American public.<br />
<br />
They will try to impeach me for what I am doing to save the public credit of the United States. In my view, I would truly deserve impeachment were I to refrain from taking this timely action. The President must take care that the laws be faithfully enforced, and this includes the federal budget and the commitments embodied in our entitlements programs and in the solvency of our Treasury securities.<br />
<br />
I look forward to next year’s elections, which I expect will be largely fought over this issue and the larger questions which it raises.<br />
<br />
Some have raised the question of the debt ratings agencies, and of their future evaluation of the United States public debt in the light of these events. I take this opportunity to announce that the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and the FBI, acting under my direction, have initiated a comprehensive investigation of corruption and malfeasance which has been alleged against these ratings agencies in connection with their failure to provide timely warning to investors who had purchased certain toxic derivative securities in 2007-2008. We are also studying the legal means of depriving these ratings agencies of the extraordinary and quasi-governmental authority they exercise because of laws and regulations which limit certain forms of public and private investment to securities which have received favorable ratings from these agencies. To this end, we are cooperating with the authorities in Italy and other countries who have also undertaken aggressive investigations of the corruption of these ratings agencies.<br />
<br />
The Department of Justice is also investigating reports that members of Congress have entered into criminal conspiracies with bankers and hedge fund operators for the purpose of selling Treasury securities short in the context of the current crisis, and linked this to the votes they cast. The Attorney General has promised to report on this issue at the earliest possible date.<br />
<br />
For my part, I do not intend to sell America short. Historically, those who have bet against the United States have not prevailed, nor will they prevail today.<br />
<br />
My great predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, delivered his first inaugural address on a morning in March 1933 when every bank in our country had been forced to close its doors because of panic runs, and the economic heart of the nation had stopped beating. In the face of that emergency, the defiant rallying figure of FDR promised action with these words:<br />
<br />
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure. I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require.<br />
<br />
Roosevelt spoke these words at a time when a new Congress had failed for almost three months to do anything meaningful to fight the Great Depression and the banking panic which were ravaging the land in those years. Some at that time had concluded that our form of government was unworkable in a modern crisis, and they were looking abroad for new models of totalitarianism. We must always realize that any system of government which cannot solve the most urgent, life and death problems of the everyday life of the people is not long for this world. It risks being swept aside. If democracy brings chaos, that may be the end of democracy. In this sense, the future our democratic representative government depends on our solvency.<br />
<br />
It is in this spirit that I am dealing with the current crisis. I remind you all that, while avoiding national bankruptcy and default in the short-term is absolutely indispensable, this will not by itself solve the majority of our economic problems. The world will remain gripped by an economic and financial depression of incalculable proportions. We will still have some 30 million unemployed in our country. We will still witness American families thrown on the street by fraudulent foreclosures. We will require a comprehensive economic recovery program, supplemented by significant domestic reforms, and capped by a new world monetary system, to put the current world depression behind us.<br />
<br />
It is, however, my hope that, by rebuffing those political forces seeking to drive our country into bankruptcy and chaos, we have gained the time necessary to address these issues of economic recovery and financial reform free from the climate of blackmail, extortion, and shakedown.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, America will be open for business, today, tomorrow, and every day. Equally important, we can be confident in the ability of our constitutional system to protect the general welfare and the public interest from the machinations of small cliques of fanatics, wealthy though they may be.<br />
<br />
I ask for your support. Thank you.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-80528693044993552982011-07-30T12:27:00.003-05:002011-07-31T08:49:51.994-05:00A Sample Letter to CongressBy: Dr. J. P. Hubert<br />
<br />
I respectfully demand that you reject any budget deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, and request that you raise the federal debt limit now without conditions. <br />
<br />
Entitlements are legislatively guaranteed human rights which flow from the Natural Moral Law. You are well aware that Americans contribute to their Social Security and Medicare benefits through their payroll withholding taxes. It is factually incorrect and sophistic in the most reprehensible way to suggest that Entitlements represent unearned give-aways or welfare. <br />
<br />
Moreover, it is the height of hubris to demand cuts in Entitlements (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid) while insisting that taxes not be raised. What kind of disordered thinking is that? It is completely illogical unless legislators truely desire to harm the weakest among us in order to benefit the strongest. It represents a despicable kind of social Darwinism that should be totally rejected in fair and just society.<br />
<br />
A balanced approach to budget deficit reduction would include cuts in military/security/intelligence spending and increases in taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals without cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid--currently preferred by a clear majority of Americans. I count on you to do the fair, just and honorable thing.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-29864077636716867332011-07-29T12:35:00.001-05:002011-07-29T12:36:30.530-05:00Disastrous Outcomes From An Orchestrated CrisisBy Paul Craig Roberts <br />
<em><a href="opednews.comhttp://www.opednews.com/articles/Disastrous-Outcomes-From-A-by-paul-craig-roberts-110728-135.html#comment339027">Opednews.com</a></em><br />
July 28, 2011<br />
<br />
With the world concerned about US financial credibility and the poor outlook for the US economy, now is not the time for the Republicans to grandstand on the public debt. The debt ceiling needed to be quietly raised. Instead, the Republicans started a fire and then threw gasoline on it, creating an inferno that could burn up the US social safety net or the US Treasury's credit rating and the US dollar's role as reserve currency or what remains of the separation of powers. <br />
<br />
Consequently, world financial markets, currency markets, commodity markets, central banks, and mutual fund money market and bond funds are on pins and needles. <br />
<br />
This level of irresponsibility is seldom seen even from American politicians. <br />
<br />
<strong>Republicans have created a totally unnecessary crisis and turned it into compelling political theater.</strong> Will the US default? Will entitlements be slashed? Will Obama seize the power of the purse from Congress in order to save the dollar and the US credit rating? None of these questions needed to arise. <br />
<br />
While the world media fixates on the orchestrated debt ceiling crisis, the US government continues to bomb civilians in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia and continues with preparations to do the same thing to Syria and Iran. <br />
<br />
<strong>The violations of other countries' sovereignties, the naked aggressions that constitute war crimes, the murder of noncombatants, and the horrible moral and economic expense inflicted by the maximization of the military/security complex's profits are somehow not a crisis</strong>. These are just routine, normal, everyday necessary events. Nothing to notice or to become upset about. <br />
<br />
<strong>The off-shoring of US jobs, GDP, tax base, and consumer demand that has eroded away the US economy and the government's tax base, thus elevating the deficit, is somehow not a crisis.</strong> These are just the imperatives of globalism and the routine maximization of shareholders' profits and management's performance bonuses. <br />
<br />
<strong>The US has become such a ridiculous collection of fools that no real crisis can be recognized. Instead, the country is mesmerized by a fake crisis. </strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
The fake orchestrated crisis can easily turn into a real one.<strong> If income support programs are slashed, so will be consumer demand, and the US economy will decline further, widening the budget deficit and national debt. </strong><br />
<br />
If the Republicans force the country into default, the dollar will suffer. At the least, import prices will rise and the trade deficit with them. At the worse, the dollar will lose its reserve currency role, and the US will no longer be able to pay its oil bill in its own currency. With its balance of payments deep in the red, it has no foreign currency with which to purchase oil. <br />
<br />
If Obama has to seize the power of the purse in order to prevent a new financial crisis from landing on top of the ongoing financial crisis, democracy will take another big hit. <br />
<br />
<strong>Americans need desperately to ask themselves why they put into political office such utterly irresponsible and incompetent people capable of creating such a totally unnecessary crisis loaded with such disastrous potential outcomes</strong>. It would appear that the American population is too insouciant to use the vote with any care. <br />
<br />
Little wonder that the president is becoming a Caesar.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-12541860213963855832011-07-29T11:25:00.001-05:002011-07-29T11:40:05.739-05:00Tax Cuts for the Middle Class and Poor STIMULATE The Economy, But Tax Cuts for the Wealthy HURT The Economyby <em><a href="http://washingtonsblog.com/">Washington's Blog</a></em> <br />
July 28, 2011 <br />
<br />
Extreme conservatives push for tax cuts ... but just for the wealthy.<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Extreme liberals are against all tax cuts, believing that we need higher taxes to pay for government programs ... and that taxes somehow won't create any drag on the economy.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>Both extremes are wrong.<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">In fact, <strong>tax cuts for the middle class and poor stimulate the economy, but tax cuts for the wealthy hurt the economy.</strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">This is actually a very simple concept, although some politicians and economists unintentionally or intentionally muddy the waters.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">As Ed Harrison notes today:</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Bruce Bartlett, a Republican political appointee and domestic policy advisor to Ronald Reagan, points out that: </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Taxes were cut in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">It would have been one thing if the Bush tax cuts had at least bought the country a higher rate of economic growth, even temporarily. They did not. Real G.D.P. growth peaked at just 3.6 percent in 2004 before fading rapidly. <strong>Even before the crisis hit, real G.D.P. was growing less than 2 percent a year...</strong></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">According to a recent C.B.O. report, they (Bush tax cuts) reduced revenue by at least $2.9 trillion below what it otherwise would have been between 2001 and 2011. Slower-than-expected growth reduced revenue by another $3.5 trillion (6.4 trillion).</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>Spending was $5.6 trillion higher than the C.B.O. anticipated for a total fiscal turnaround of $12 trillion. That is how <strong>a $6 trillion projected surplus turned into a cumulative deficit of $6 trillion.</strong><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Bartlett offers this killer chart as a summary of the numbers:</div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLP1Sbe9S-avT50TqD8iYpr-TBDNEHmY-1Z7Hvuqp1GUJxU-sivz7rgdqX7eL8d3ye4PjjP2BysTJhJkrGDDObr5PUMd-KaofCAg3Ag3_QU92QJjgON6VzpHWxF0k8gs19NaKFqOjgI0U/s1600/CBO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLP1Sbe9S-avT50TqD8iYpr-TBDNEHmY-1Z7Hvuqp1GUJxU-sivz7rgdqX7eL8d3ye4PjjP2BysTJhJkrGDDObr5PUMd-KaofCAg3Ag3_QU92QJjgON6VzpHWxF0k8gs19NaKFqOjgI0U/s400/CBO.jpg" t$="true" width="400" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">If you recall, it was George W. Bush’s father, GHW Bush, who, when campaigning against Reagan, called supply side economics’ claims that tax cuts pay for themselves Voodoo Economics. And Bush was proved right when deficits spiralled out of control and both Reagan and Bush were forced to raise taxes.</div>The Bush tax cuts accrued disproportionately to the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center shows that 65 percent of the dollar value of the Bush tax cuts accrued to the top quintile, while 20 percent went to the top 0.1 percent of income earners. <br />
<br />
If you want to talk about redistribution, there it is. <br />
<br />
The <em>New York Times</em> reported in 2007:<br />
<br />
Families earning more than $1 million a year saw their federal tax rates drop more sharply than any group in the country as a result of President Bush’s tax cuts, according to a new Congressional study. <br />
<br />
The study, by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, also shows that tax rates for middle-income earners edged up in 2004, the most recent year for which data was available, while rates for people at the very top continued to decline.<br />
<br />
Based on an exhaustive analysis of tax records and census data, the study reinforced the sense that while Mr. Bush’s tax cuts reduced rates for people at every income level, they offered the biggest benefits by far to people at the very top — especially the top 1 percent of income earners.<br />
<br />
The Economic Policy Institute reported in June:<br />
<br />
<strong>The Bush-era tax changes conferred disproportionate benefits to those at the top of the earnings distribution, exacerbating a trend of widening income inequality at a time of already poor wage growth.</strong> <br />
The top 1% of earners (making over $620,442) received 38% of the tax cuts. The lower 60% of filers (making less than $67,715) received less than 20% of the total benefit of Bush’s tax policies.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Bush-era tax cuts were designed to reduce taxes for the wealthy,</strong> and the benefits of faster growth were then supposed to trickle down to the middle class. But the economic impact of cutting capital gains rates and lowering the top marginal tax rates never materialized for working families. Inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings fell by 2.3% during the 2002-07 economic expansion, which holds the distinction for being the worst economic expansion since World War II.<br />
<br />
This isn't complicated. <strong>Rampant inequality largely caused the Great Depression and the current economic crisis. </strong>Cutting taxes on the middle and lower classes reduces inequality and stimulates the consumer economy. But cutting taxes for the wealthy reduces aggregate consumer demand. <br />
<br />
As economics professor Robert Reich notes:<br />
<br />
First, <strong>the rich spend a smaller proportion of their wealth than the less-affluent, and so when more and more wealth becomes concentrated in the hands of the wealth, there is less overall spending and less overall manufacturing to meet consumer</strong> <strong>needs.</strong><br />
<br />
Second, in both the Roaring 20s and 2000-2007 period, the middle class incurred a lot of debt to pay for the things they wanted, as their real wages were stagnating and they were getting a smaller and smaller piece of the pie. In other words, they had less and less wealth, and so they borrowed more and more to make up the difference. As Reich notes:<br />
<br />
Between 1913 and 1928, the ratio of private credit to the total national economy nearly doubled. Total mortgage debt was almost three times higher in 1929 than in 1920. Eventually, in 1929, as in 2008, there were “no more poker chips to be loaned on credit,” in [former Fed chairman Mariner] Eccles' words. And “when their credit ran out, the game stopped.”<br />
<br />
And third, since the wealthy accumulated more, they wanted to invest more, so a lot of money poured into speculative investments, leading to huge bubbles, which eventually burst. Reich points out: <br />
<br />
In the 1920s, richer Americans created stock and real estate bubbles that foreshadowed those of the late 1990s and 2000s. The Dow Jones Stock Index ballooned from 63.9 in mid-1921 to a peak of 381.2 eight years later, before it plunged. There was also frantic speculation in land. The Florida real estate boom lured thousands of investors into the Everglades, from where many never returned, at least financially.<br />
<br />
Tax cuts for the little guy gives them more "poker chips" to play with, boosting consumer spending and stimulating the economy.<br />
<br />
As Reich noted last year:<br />
<br />
Small businesses are responsible for almost all job growth in a typical recovery. So if small businesses are hurting, we're not going to see much job growth any time soon.<br />
<br />
On the other hand (despite oft-repeated mythology), <strong>tax cuts for the wealthiest tend to help the big businesses ... which don't create many jobs.</strong><br />
<br />
In fact, economics professor Steve Keen ran an economic computer model in 2009, and the model demonstrated that:<br />
<br />
<strong>Giving the stimulus to the debtors is a more potent way of reducing the impact of a credit crunch</strong> [than giving money to the big banks and other creditors].<br />
<br />
And as discussed above, Reich notes that <strong>tax cuts for the wealthy just lead to speculative bubbles ... which hurt, rather than help the economy</strong>.<br />
<br />
Indeed, <strong>Keen has demonstrated that "a sustainable level of bank profits appears to be about 1% of GDP" ... higher bank profits lead to a ponzi economy and a depression. And too much concentration of wealth increases financial speculation</strong>, and therefore makes the financial sector (and the big banks) grow too big and too profitable.<br />
<br />
No wonder Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman called the Bush tax cuts the "worst fiscal mistake in history", and said that extending them will not boost the economy.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-79102134510029533312011-07-27T10:03:00.000-05:002011-07-27T10:03:31.947-05:00GOP Debt Ceiling Plan to Be 'Last One Standing' - to Obama's DelightLast updated: 07/27/2011 02:28:59<br />
<br />
<br />
By Lori Price<br />
<em><a href="http://legitgov.org/">legitgov.org</a></em><br />
<br />
July 26, 2011 <br />
<br />
House Speaker John Boehner's plan will likely be the 'last one standing' -- one that President Obama must accept or face 'default' aka the pseudo-crisis created by and for the GOP -- and that is exactly the scenario he wants. <strong>Seeking political cover, Obama said he would veto earlier austere Boehner (R-OH) plans. That was never his actual intention, as he could have exposed the hypocrisy of the debt-ceiling self-generated crisis and invoked the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The stage is set for Obama to implement the Tea Party-pwned GOP plan and appear to be the 'adult in the room.'</strong><br />
<br />
Obama failed to assert the fact that Republicans voted to increase the debt ceiling *seven times* under unelected George W. Bush. At the time, they referred to their vote on the Sunday talk show circuit as 'routine house-keeping.' <strong>Dick Cheney also said 'deficits don't matter,' as he and the GOP were exploding them for the sole benefit of US corpora-terrorists</strong>. In addition to unfunded wars-for-oil, the unfunded (Homeland) security state, and the unfunded 'Leave No Every Child Behind' (so that we can privatize education), <strong>Bush and the GOP ushered in tsunami-sized deficits by over-funding the pharma-terrorists at every opportunity.</strong><br />
<br />
Remember Project Bioshield? 'As part of Project Bioshield, the Department of Health and Human Services has been allocated $5.6 billion to build up the Strategic National Stockpile with drugs, vaccines and therapies to prepare for the threat of terrorist attacks.' (See: Nuke attack drug contracts up for grabs --Feds to tap drug makers for stockpiles against radiation poisoning. By Aarron Smith 23 Sep 2005.) Another wasted $5.6 billion in giveaways to the pharma-terrorists after the anthrax attacks and avian flu scares created by Fort Detrick, etc.<br />
<br />
Under Bush/Cheney, the pharma-terrorists were going to get their extra taxpayer billions by starving the US government of the right to bargain for Medicare drugs and lower costs. In fact, the GOP-run congress 'threatened its own' and kept the vote open against House rules for nearly three additional hours to ram through Bush's big pharma giveaway aka the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003.<br />
<br />
In Republican Deficit Hypocrisy - Remember the Medicare drug benefit?, Bruce Bartlett described what happened when Republicans were determined to pass the 'budget-busting drug bill' in an editorial for Forbes, published 20 Nov 2009:<br />
<br />
The vote was kept open for almost three hours while the House Republican leadership brought massive pressure to bear on the handful of principled Republicans who had the nerve to put country ahead of party. The leadership even froze the C-SPAN cameras so that no one outside the House chamber could see what was going on.<br />
<br />
Among those congressmen strenuously pressed to change their vote was Nick Smith, R-Mich., who later charged that several members of Congress attempted to virtually bribe him, by promising to ensure that his son got his seat when he retired if he voted for the drug bill...<br />
<br />
Eventually, the arm-twisting got three Republicans to switch their votes from nay to yea... Three Democrats also switched from nay to yea and two Republicans switched from yea to nay, for a final vote of 220 to 215. In the end, only 25 Republicans voted against the budget-busting drug bill. (All but 16 Democrats voted no.)<br />
<br />
As an aside, can anyone *imagine* what would have happened if the Democratic House leadership froze C-SPAN cameras and kept voting open an extra three hours? The trial-by-Tea Party, conviction, execution, and viral YouTube replay of same would have been all wrapped up in about five hours. But I digress.<br />
<br />
Recalling the classic line uttered by Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network: 'If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook.' <strong>If Barack Obama wanted the public option, there would have been a public option.</strong> Obama would have invoked the 'moral imperative of health care for all' by mustering his soaring rhetorical skills and worked tireless for same. Obama chose federalized RomneyCare instead of the public option, even though candidate Obama campaigned for single-payer health care. Obama extended the Bush tax cuts, even though candidate Obama campaigned to allow them to sunset in 2010. Again, he allowed the GOP to control the narrative and in the final hours, pretended to cave when extending the Bush tax cuts was never problematic to him. <strong>If Obama wanted the Bush tax cuts to sunset, the would have been allowed to sunset.</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>The Democratic plan is to pass the Republican plan. They are just using different covers on the same playbook. </strong>Yes, some Democrats have fought for the people and continue to fight. But they are continually pushed to the right and/or are overtaken by the Democratic majority. <strong>Barack Obama was 'allowed' to win in 2008 so that he could turn over the rest of the U.S. Treasury to the Wall Street class and to pardon the Bush cabal for its war crimes.</strong> (War crimes, by the way, that continue in the Obama Administration.) Obama has taken the US into more covert and overt wars than did Bush and will have destroyed the middle class, an act even George W. Bush could not complete. Truly, mission accomplished!Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-23423426879592421032011-07-27T09:55:00.000-05:002011-07-27T09:55:06.515-05:00Is America Caught In The Closed Mind Trap?By: Paul Craig Roberts<br />
<em>Opednews.com</em> July 27, 2011 at 00:04:48 <br />
<br />
A reader responded to my recent column about how the US president was becoming a Caesar with a question: "Wouldn't a Caesar be preferable to a democracy in which the people are too ignorant, disinterested, and stupid to engage in self-government?" <br />
<br />
Before I became a widely read columnist with many reader responses, I would have disagreed with the reader's characterization of the American people. Today, I cannot answer the reader's question with a "no" as confidently as I would like. <br />
<br />
I receive appreciative words from many readers who are well aware of what is going on. I also hear from many who are so partisan and have such strong emotional responses that they are unable to follow an argument. I don't know what percentage these groups comprise in the population, but there seem to be a number of Americans, both on the left and the right, who are prepared to censor and even to kill in order to defend their illusions and delusions. <br />
<br />
I remain a suspect bogyman for some on the left, because of my association with the Kemp-Roth bill and Reaganomics. As I, and others, have explained so many times, Supply-Side economics reversed the monetary/fiscal policy mix in order to cure stagflation. But some leftists persist in their insistence that it was all a trick to cut taxes for the rich -- the rich being those with more money than they. A stressed-out $100,000 a year guy with a family in a high-cost city is thrown into the rich class with the hedge fund manager who paid himself one billion dollars. <br />
<br />
To give the leftists their due, at least they know that I was a member of the Reagan administration. However, the right-wing zealots think that I am a pinko-liberal-commie. <br />
<br />
Recently I wrote an article pointing out that the Republicans had picked a bad time, when the world was already concerned about US financial credibility, to make an issue over the routine increase of the debt ceiling, thus creating an impasse that threatens default. The Republicans see in the debt ceiling issue an opportunity to cut social spending as the price of allowing an increase in the national debt. <br />
<br />
One can't blame the Republicans for trying to do something about the growth of the public debt. However, there is a risk in the Republican's intransigency, and that risk is that, thanks to presidential directives put on the books by President Bush, President Obama has the authority to declare the prospect of default a national emergency. Obama can simply set aside the debt ceiling limit and seize the power of the purse from Congress. The transformation of the president into Caesar would take another large step forward. <br />
<br />
I wrote that I regarded this risk to be greater than the risk of additional public debt. <br />
<br />
Several Republicans never reached the point of the article. I had taken for granted that everyone knew, especially Republicans, of the Republicans' concern with entitlements and unfunded liabilities. I assumed that Republicans were aware of their party's long history of reacting against the debts that are being piled upon our grandchildren, that they knew of the Grace Commission during the Reagan years, that they knew of Republican Pete Peterson's many dramatic warnings and proposals, that they knew of David Walker's accounting of the unfunded liabilities and the Republican Party's determination to do something about the heavily-hyped cost of Social Security and Medicare. <br />
<br />
I assumed that Republicans knew that during the Reagan years David Stockman and Alan Greenspan had accelerated the payroll tax increases that President Carter had put in place to ensure the long-term viability of Social Security and had spent the money for current operating expenses, leaving unfunded IOUs in the Social Security "trust fund." I Assumed that Republicans knew that Republican Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Michael Boskin, and his Boskin Commission had reconfigured the Consumer Price Index in order to understate inflation and, thereby, reduce the cost-of-living-adjustments in Social Security checks. <br />
<br />
I assumed that Republicans somewhere along the way had read at least one paper by a Republican policy analyst or think-tank member about the Social Security "Ponzi scheme" and the unaffordability of Medicare. <br />
<br />
But, no, the Republican partisans who denounced me as an anti-Republican liberal propagandist for saying what is widely reported in the media -- that the Republicans want large cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as the price of their agreement to an increase in the debt limit -- know nothing whatsoever of their party's position on social spending. Apparently, they don't even watch Fox News. <br />
<br />
These same partisans apparently have not noticed that the $1.2 trillion military/security expenditures are "off the table" when it comes to controlling spending. The Republicans and also the Democrats regard war as more important than old age pensions and medical care for the poor and the elderly. My Republican critics have also failed to notice that House Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor has made certain that tax increases on mega-high incomes are also "off the table." According to mega-billionaire Warren Buffet, in America today we have the situation in which Buffet's secretary pays a larger share of her income in taxes than does Buffet. <br />
<br />
When I wrote that the Republicans' fixation with slashing the social safety net -- a throw-away line that is in every news report on the debt ceiling imbroglio -- could turn out to be a threat to the separation of powers, several Republican partisans took extraordinary offense. Only a no-good liberal propagandist would claim that Republicans wanted to slash the safety net. My statement of an obvious fact reflected in the Republicans' own proposals was all that it took for my critics to conclude that a notorious Reaganite was a Republican-hating liberal. <br />
<br />
It is annoying that people who have no idea what they are talking about are so ready to pop off. But it is discouraging to a writer that people are so emotional that they cannot follow an argument. Discouraged, in part by block-headed readers and from censorship of my writings by various Internet sites, I quit my column a while back and signed off. <br />
<br />
I was beset by thousands of emails pleading and demanding that I continue to write. I relented, and the emails from thoughtful readers keep me going. <br />
<br />
It is rewarding to hear from intelligent and open-minded people. But as the weeks and months go by, I find it ever more tiresome to tolerate closed minds spewing hate and ignorance. I have become convinced that there are enough frustrated and ignorant people out there to constitute a movement for a Fuhrer. <br />
<br />
Washington, which has produced a long list of disastrous policy decisions since the collapse of the Soviet Empire two decades ago, will no doubt continue making incredible mistakes about everything, and we will end up with a Caesar or a Fuhrer.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-40786117145788179732011-07-25T11:18:00.002-05:002011-07-25T11:43:31.894-05:00The Federal Reserve Made $16 Trillion In Secret Loans To Their Bankster Friends<em><a href="http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-looting-of-america-the-federal-reserve-made-16-trillion-in-secret-loans-to-their-bankster-friends-and-the-media-is-ignoring-the-eye-popping-corruption-that-has-been-uncovered">The American Dream </a></em><br />
July 25, 2011<br />
<br />
A one-time limited GAO audit of the Federal Reserve that was mandated by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has uncovered some eye-popping corruption at the Fed and the mainstream media is barely even covering it. It turns out that <strong>the Federal Reserve made $16.1 trillion in secret loans to their bankster friends during the financial crisis.</strong> You can read a copy of the GAO investigation for yourself<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation"> right here.</a> These loans only went to the “too big to fail” banks and to foreign financial institutions. Not a penny of these loans went to small banks or to ordinary Americans. Not only did the banksters get trillions in nearly interest-free loans, but the Fed actually paid them over 600 million dollars to help run the emergency lending program. <strong>The GAO investigation revealed some absolutely stunning conflicts of interest, and yet the mainstream media does not even seem interested. Solid evidence of the looting of America has been put right in front of us,</strong> and yet hardly anyone wants to talk about it.<br />
<br />
Many Americans have a hard time grasping just how large 16.1 trillion dollars is. It is an amount of money that is almost inconceivable. It is more than the GDP of the United States for an entire year. It is more than the U.S. government has spent over the last four years combined.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Federal Reserve was just creating gigantic piles of cash out of thin air and throwing them around with wild abandon</strong>.<br />
<br />
One of the only members of Congress that has wanted to talk about the GAO audit has been U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. The following is a statement about this audit that was taken from his official website….<br />
<br />
“As a result of this audit, we now know that the Federal Reserve provided more than $16 trillion in total financial assistance to some of the largest financial institutions and corporations in the United States and throughout the world”<br />
<br />
So precisely who got this money?<br />
<br />
Well, a recent article on <em>Raw Story</em> named some of the big Wall Street banks that got some of this money….<br />
<br />
Out of all borrowers, Citigroup received the most financial assistance from the Fed, at $2.5 trillion. Morgan Stanley came in second with $2.04 trillion, followed by Merill Lynch at $1.9 trillion and Bank of America at $1.3 trillion.<br />
<br />
But <strong>it just wasn’t U.S. banksters that were showered with nearly interest-free loans. It turns out that approximately $3.08 trillion went to foreign financial institutions all over Europe and Asia.</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
So who in the world gave the Federal Reserve permission to bail out financial institutions all over the world?<br />
<br />
Nobody did.<br />
<br />
But <strong>under our current system the Federal Reserve doesn’t have to get permission. They literally get to do whatever they want.</strong><br />
<br />
On his website, Senator Sanders expressed his outrage over these foreign loans….<br />
<br />
“No agency of the United States government should be allowed to bailout a foreign bank or corporation without the direct approval of Congress and the president”<br />
<br />
So should we expect Congress to approve legislation that would reduce the power of the Fed?<br />
<br />
Of course not.<br />
<br />
We all know that is not going to happen.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Federal Reserve is run like a dictatorship. They get to do what they want and nobody can stop them</strong>.<br />
<br />
Not only did the Fed dish out over $16 trillion in secret loans to their friends, but they also paid their bankster friends over 600 million dollars to help them do it.<br />
According to the GAO, the Federal Reserve paid $659.4 million to the very financial institutions which caused the financial crisis to help the Fed manage all of these emergency loans.<br />
<br />
Can anyone say “conflict of interest”?<br />
<br />
<strong>Not only were the banksters raking in trillions in secret loans, they were also paid to help run the lending process</strong>.<br />
<br />
Wow.<br />
<br />
So why isn’t the mainstream media talking about this?<br />
<br />
That is a very good question.<br />
<br />
But wait, there is more.<br />
<br />
It turns out that <strong>many Fed officials had very large investments in the financial institutions that were receiving these secret loans.</strong><br />
<br />
So what was done about all of the conflict of interest issues that arose?<br />
<br />
According to Senator Sanders, “the Fed provided conflict of interest waivers to employees and private contractors so they could keep investments in the same financial institutions and corporations that were given emergency loans.”<br />
<br />
Oh, everyone was given waivers.<br />
<br />
Apparently corruption is okay if we just get everyone to sign a bunch of forms.<br />
<br />
The following is one example of a conflict of interest that occurred during this lending program that Senator Sanders noted on his website….<br />
<br />
For example, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase served on the New York Fed’s board of directors at the same time that his bank received more than $390 billion in financial assistance from the Fed. Moreover, JP Morgan Chase served as one of the clearing banks for the Fed’s emergency lending programs.<br />
<br />
This is <strong>a classic case of the foxes watching the hen house.</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>It was the banksters that caused the financial crisis. They were the only ones that the Federal Reserve helped. </strong>In fact, the Federal Reserve ended up having the banksters basically run the entire emergency lending program as Senator Sanders noted on his site….<br />
<br />
The Fed outsourced virtually all of the operations of their emergency lending programs to private contractors like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo. The same firms also received trillions of dollars in Fed loans at near-zero interest rates.<br />
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If you were not outraged by that, then you need to read it again.<br />
<br />
What the banksters have been getting away with is absolutely mind blowing.<br />
<br />
So will changes be made to make sure that something like this never happens again in the future?<br />
<br />
Well, the GAO has recommended that significant changes should be made.<br />
<br />
But as mentioned above, the only one that gets to tell the Federal Reserve what to do is the Federal Reserve.<br />
<br />
According to the <em>Washington Post</em>, the Federal Reserve is promising to “strongly consider” the recommendations of the GAO….<br />
<br />
The Fed’s general counsel, Scott Alvarez, said in a letter responding to the GAO’s audit that officials will “strongly consider” the recommendations.<br />
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<strong>Most Americans do not realize that the Federal Reserve is not actually part of the federal government. It is a privately-owned central bank that is not accountable to anyone</strong>.<br />
<br />
But most Americans still believe that the Fed is a government agency.<br />
<br />
The truth is that the Federal Reserve is about as “federal” as Federal Express is.<br />
<br />
In another article about the Federal Reserve, I noted that <strong>the Federal Reserve has even admitted that it is not an agency of the federal government in court</strong>….<br />
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In defending itself against a Bloomberg request for information under the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Reserve objected by declaring that it was “not an agency” of the U.S. government and therefore it was not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.<br />
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<strong>Basically, an unaccountable private monopoly creates our money, sets our interest rates, regulates our banking system and makes secret loans to whoever they want.</strong><br />
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The Federal Reserve has more power over our economy than any other institution and nobody can overrule any decisions that they make.<br />
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Does that sound very “American” to you?<br />
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<strong>Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, it has been systematically destroying the wealth of America through constant and never ending inflation.</strong><br />
<br />
The U.S. dollar loses more value every single year.<br />
<br />
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, what you could buy for $1.00 in 1965 will cost you $7.17 today.<br />
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Sadly, <strong>the devaluation of our money is actually accelerating</strong>. That is one reason why we are seeing precious metals soar right now.<br />
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Not only that, but the Federal Reserve was also designed to be a perpetual government debt creation machine.<br />
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Do you know how money is created in this country?<br />
<br />
Normally, more money is only created when more debt is created.<br />
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What this sets up is a never end spiral where the amount of money and the amount of debt are continually increasing.<br />
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Most Americans believe that we could solve the government debt problem if we could just control spending.<br />
<br />
But that is not the case.<br />
<br />
The Federal Reserve system was designed to get the U.S. government into constantly increasing amounts of debt and this is exactly what has happened….<br />
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<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB3fpPAxEjukfsTZhKU-ADyb9cQm4BMm-Zm9KfmSYoxzDZRqLj0sLV9dKWNJ3lZy0FZMeAbt52sEjwGCjxV6V8ozOmygXAu17JO2NZASMn4_I354kjPccSEPOFsNt6LG58OP51KiA8UQc/s1600/National+Debt+from+1940+to+2010.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB3fpPAxEjukfsTZhKU-ADyb9cQm4BMm-Zm9KfmSYoxzDZRqLj0sLV9dKWNJ3lZy0FZMeAbt52sEjwGCjxV6V8ozOmygXAu17JO2NZASMn4_I354kjPccSEPOFsNt6LG58OP51KiA8UQc/s400/National+Debt+from+1940+to+2010.bmp" t$="true" width="301" /></a><br />
<strong>The U.S. government will never fix the national debt problem as long as it participates in the Federal Reserve system. </strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
Founding fathers such as Thomas <strong>Jefferson tried to warn us about the danger of central banking.</strong><br />
<br />
Jefferson strongly believed that when the federal government borrows money in one generation that must be paid back by future generations it is equivalent to theft….<br />
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And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.<br />
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Not only that, Thomas Jefferson actually said that if he could add just one more amendment to the U.S. Constitution it would be a complete ban on all government debt….<br />
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.<br />
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Of course we did not listen to Thomas Jefferson, did we?<br />
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Now we have gotten ourselves into one fine mess.<br />
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<strong>If the federal government shut down the Federal Reserve system, started issuing debt-free money and established a new system based on sound financial principles we might have a chance of turning this thing around.</strong><br />
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But if we continue on the path that we are currently on, <strong>we are going to experience a financial disaster of unprecedented magnitude. We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and a day of reckoning is approaching</strong>.<br />
<br />
Our founding fathers tried to warn us about this, but we thought that we were so much smarter than them.<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Now we get to suffer the consequences of our foolishness.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-65655298484272065642011-07-25T08:55:00.001-05:002011-07-25T09:03:56.328-05:00The Real Crime: Concentration of Power By Ralph Gomory<br />
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July 21, 2011 <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ralph-gomory/the-real-crime-concentrat_b_905093.html">"Huffington Post"</a> --- We are missing the lesson of the current British outrage over Murdoch just as we missed the lesson of the financial crisis in America.<br />
<br />
Was the real crime in England that employees of the News of the World illegally hacked the cell phone of a missing girl? Was the real financial crime in America illegal acts such as Ponzi schemes or insider trading? The answer is no in both cases.<br />
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The real crime in England was legal, not illegal; it was that one man had the power to influence large parts of the British parliament and was credited with a major influence in electing whichever government he favored. No one in government dared to cross him until an emotion-provoking illegal act unleashed a public outcry. That outcry has, at least temporarily, liberated the members of Parliament from their fear of being smeared by Murdoch's newspapers if they dared to be hostile to his interests or beliefs.<br />
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Was the real crime in America illegal acts? No. Despite the press devoted to Madoff, the real crime, here as in England, was legal. Selling subprime mortgages to people who could never pay them back was legal. Rating agencies certifying to the high quality of the resulting worthless securities was legal. The whole web of interacting CDO's was legal. <strong>It was the legal, though strongly unethical, actions of a powerful Wall Street dedicated to self-enrichment at any price that brought down the U.S. economy</strong>. And, though we are still far from recovering from that disaster, the power of money has prevented any fundamental reform of the financial sector.<br />
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In both countries, <strong>the real crime is the concentration of power</strong> that allows these things to happen.<br />
<strong>How Power is Used</strong><br />
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Power can be exerted through both the stick and the carrot. In England, members of Parliament feared being smeared in the powerful Murdoch newspapers, and they also knew that if they accommodated his views or interests, they could profit from his support.<br />
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In the United States, <strong>members of Congress understand that Wall Street money and corporate money can either be used to defeat them or to support their campaigns. They also know that if they are sufficiently influential in the right direction, lobbying jobs that are far more financially rewarding than their present occupation await them when they retire from Congress</strong><br />
<br />
Money can extend its power to other parts of government, too. In England, part of the police force became a Murdoch ally in ferreting out more news about important stories. In America, regulatory bodies, established to protect the public interest, become blind to risky behavior and kind to the industry. And these examples are some entries in a long list of possibilities.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Tyranny of Government</strong><br />
<br />
It has been common throughout history for the concentration of power to be in governments, often but not always monarchies or dictatorships, and for the leaders of such governments to act to enrich themselves and their friends. In the years preceding the American Revolution, the British government's restrictions on colonial manufacturing, the Navigation Acts, the tax on stamps, and the tax on tea, brought revenue to the British Crown and profits to British merchants and manufacturers at the expense of the colonies, but also produced a revolution. This tyranny by governments is the type of oppression which the Tea Party is constantly reminding us of, but today's tyranny is of a different type.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Tyranny of Wealth</strong><br />
<br />
The problem today is not the tyranny of government, but rather the concentration of money, and hence power, in Wall Street and in the largest corporations. And it is clear that enough money can buy political power.<br />
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Both Wall Street and the major corporations have added to their strong direct effect on the economy a decisive effect on the actions of governmental bodies. It is their influence on the federal government that caused the regulatory bodies to stand back from regulation and encouraged the excesses of the financial sector in the years leading up to the crash. It was the federal government, led by Wall Street alumni, that rescued the financial institutions so that they are now posting record profits despite having impoverished the nation. <strong>It was the overwhelming lobbying power of the financial sector that prevented the passage of meaningful financial reform</strong>. The banks that were too big to fail are, with the concurrence of both political parties, now bigger than ever. And the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court, permitting the unrestricted use of corporate and Wall Street money for campaigns, are adding to this effect.<br />
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The declared goal of most major U.S. corporations today is to make their stock as valuable as possible. As more than two-thirds of all stock is held by the wealthiest five percent in the country, this corporate goal amounts in practice to simply making the wealthy wealthier and increasing the extreme concentration of wealth and power that already exists in America today. And if making the stock as valuable as possible means sending jobs and technology abroad, while holding down wages at home, so be it.<br />
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Yet it is to this same corporate leadership that the government turns for policy advice on how to create jobs and revive the economy.<br />
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<strong>Today</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>Today we have a concentration of wealth unmatched since the days immediately preceding the Great Depression in 1929.</strong> This wealth and power, concentrated in Wall Street and in the major corporations, is being used for the enrichment of the already wealthy. Unfortunately, that enrichment is one that does not raise all boats. As statistics clearly show, the big boats are rising rapidly and the small boats are not doing well.<br />
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<strong>After the Great Depression, the U.S. government acted to lessen the power of concentrated wealth. It separated commercial from investment banking, insured bank deposits, enacted social security, and facilitated unions as a counter-force to corporations.</strong> It even became to some extent the employer of last resort.<br />
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But the power of wealth today over both political parties is now such that new government actions are mainly words that cover real inaction, and even that limited action is often described as the actions of a too large and too powerful government.<br />
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Today, the threat of tyranny comes not from the government, but from the concentration of wealth and power outside government, and from the influence on government of that great concentration of wealth and power.Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5090441192101088227.post-12067421095838155382011-07-24T12:12:00.002-05:002011-07-24T12:23:25.779-05:00Gang of Six takes from poor, gives to rich: There Will be Major Cuts in Social SecurityJuly 22, 2011 ------- If there was ever a time in the modern history of America that the American people should become engaged in what's going on here in Washington, now is that time. Decisions are being made that will impact not only our generation but the lives of our children and our grandchildren for decades to come, and I fear very much that the decisions being contemplated are not good decisions, are not fair decisions.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/l8cmEoER6Ic" width="640"></iframe><br />
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There is increased understanding that defaulting for the first time in our history on our debts would be a disaster for the American economy and for the world's economy. We should not do that.<br />
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There also is increased discussion about long-term deficit reduction and how we address the crisis which we face today of a record-breaking deficit of $1.4 trillion and a $14 trillion-plus national debt.<br />
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One of the long-term deficit reduction plans came from the so-called Gang of Six. We do not know all of the details of that proposal. In fact, we never will know because a lot of the decisions are booted to committees to work out the details. <br />
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It is fair to say, however, that Senators Coburn, Senator Crapo and Chambliss deserve congratulations. Clearly, they have won this debate in a very significant way. My guess is that they will probably get 80 percent or 90 percent of what they wanted. In this town, that is quite an achievement, but they have stood firm in their desire to represent the wealthy and the powerful and multinational corporations. They have threatened. They have been smart. They have been determined. And at the end of the day, they will get almost all of what they want. That is their victory, and I congratulate them.<br />
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Unfortunately, their victory will be a disaster for working families in this country, for the elderly, for the sick, for the children and for low-income people.<br />
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Based on the limited information that we have, I think it is important to highlight some of what is in this so-called Gang of Six proposal that the corporate media, among others, are enthralled about.<br />
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Some may remember that for a number of years, leading Democrats said that we will do everything that we can to protect Social Security, that Social Security has been an extraordinary success in our country, that for 75 years, with such volatility in the economy, Social Security has paid out every nickel owed to every eligible American. I heard Democrats say that Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit. That is right because Social Security is funded by the payroll tax, not by the U.S. Treasury. Social Security has a $2.6 trillion surplus today. It can pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American for the next 25 years. It is an enormously popular program. Poll after poll from the American people says doesn't cut Social Security. Two and a half years ago when Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, ran for president of the United States, he made it very clear if you voted for him there would be no cuts in Social Security.<br />
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What Senators Coburn, Crapo and Chambliss have managed to do in the Gang of Six is reach an agreement where there will be major cuts in Social Security. Don't let anybody kid you about this being some minor thing. It is not. What we are talking about is that Social Security cuts would go into effect virtually immediately. Ten years from now, the typical 75-year-old person will see their Social Security benefits cut by $560 a year. The average 85-year-old will see a cut of $1,000 a year. Now, for some people here in Washington, maybe the big lobbyists who make hundreds of thousands a year, $560 a year or $1,000 a year may not seem like a lot of money, but if you are a senior trying to get by on $14,000, $15,000, $18,000 a year and you're 85 years old, the end of your life, you're totally vulnerable, you're sick -- a $1,000 per year cut in what you otherwise would have received is a major, major blow.<br />
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So I congratulate Senator Coburn, Senator Crapo, Senator Chambliss for doing what president Obama said would not happen under his watch, what the Democrats have said would not happen under their watch.<br />
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But it's not just Social Security. We have 50 million Americans today who have no health insurance at all. Under the Gang of Six proposals, there will be cuts in Medicare over a 10-year period of almost $300 billion. There will be massive cuts in Medicaid and other health care programs. There will be caps on spending, which mean that there will be major cuts in education. If you are a working-class family, hoping that you're going to be able to send your kid to college and thinking that you will be eligible for a Pell grant, think twice about that. Pell grants may not be there. If you're a senior who relies on a nutrition program, that nutrition program may not be there. If you think it's a good idea that we enforce clean air and clean water provisions so that our kids can be healthy, those provisions may not be there because there will be major cuts in environmental protection.<br />
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Some people think that's not so good, but at least our Republican friends are saying we need revenue and we're going to get $1 trillion in revenue. But wait a minute,. If you read the proposal, there are very, very clear provisions making sure that we are going to make massive cuts in programs for working families, for the elderly, for the children. Those cuts are written in black and white. What about the revenue? Well, it's kind of vague. The projection is that we would rise over a 10-year period $100 billion in revenue. Where is that going to come? Is it necessarily going to come from the wealthiest people in this economy? Is it going to come from large corporations who are enjoying huge tax breaks? That is not clear at all. I want middle-class families to understand that when we talk about increased revenues, do you know where that comes from? It may come from cutbacks in the home mortgage interest deduction program, which is so very important to millions and millions of families. It may mean that if you have a health care program today, that health care program may be taxed. That's a way to raise revenue. It may be that there will be increased taxes on your retirement programs, your I.R.A.'s, your 401(k)'s. But we don't have the details for that. All we have is some kind of vague promise that we're going to raise $1 trillion over the next 10 years, no enforcement mechanism and no clarity as to where that revenue will come from.<br />
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That is why it is so terribly important that the American people become engaged in this debate which will have a huge impact on them, on their parents and on their children. The American people must fight for a fair deal. At a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing phenomenally well and their effective tax rate is the lowest on record, at a time when the top 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than 150 million Americans, at a time when corporate profits are soaring and in many instances corporations, these same corporations pay nothing in taxes, at a time when we have tripled military spending since 1997, there are fair ways to move toward deficit reduction which do not slash programs that working families and children and the elderly desperately depend upon.<br />
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This senator is going to fight back. I was not elected to the United States Senate to make devastating cuts in Social Security, in Medicare, in Medicaid, in children's programs while lowering tax rates for the wealthiest people in this country.<br />
<br />
<em>Bernie Sanders, an Independent, is Vermont's junior senator</em><br />
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<strong>____________________________________________________</strong><br />
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<strong>Gang of Six takes from poor, gives to rich</strong><br />
<br />
By: The Institute for Southern Studies<br />
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Under the Senate's so-called "Gang of Six"* debt plan unveiled this week, percent of deficit reduction that comes through spending cuts to social programs including health care, education and environmental protection: 100%<br />
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Amount by which the plan cuts Medicare, the health care program for seniors, over a decade: at least $298 billion<br />
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Amount by which it would cut military benefit programs, such as health plans for soldiers and veterans: $80 billion<br />
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Portion of the immediate deficit reduction savings outlined in the proposal that would come from reducing Social Security benefits: 1/5<br />
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Under the plan, amount less per year the average Social Security recipient would receive at age 75: $560<br />
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At age 85: $1,000<br />
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Current top marginal income tax rate for the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations: 35%<br />
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Lowest rate to which that would be reduced by the Gang of Six proposal: 23%<br />
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Estimated amount in profits being held offshore by U.S. companies, which under the plan would see an end to taxation of most of their overseas profits: $1 trillion<br />
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Amount by which the Gang of Six plan claims to reduce deficits over the next decade: almost $4 trillion<br />
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Amount by which the plan would actually reduce revenue by 2021, compared to the Congressional Budget Office's current law baseline: $1.5 trillion<br />
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Number of weeks left to reach a deal before the U.S. could begin to default on its debt obligations: less than 2Dr. J. P. Huberthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06310093961506119843noreply@blogger.com0