by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyThe US is the world's number one exporter of world terrorism and, at the same time, sustains, by far, the world's largest NEGATIVE current account balance of $ -568,800,000,000. [See: CIA: The World Factbook] In every area but 'terrorism', the US trails the world. It has not helped America's case that monies 'earned' exporting death and destruction have not helped the US current account balance which remains negative. It is, however, clear that the US makes its living, 'killing'. Fat lotta good that has done the people of the US.
US Army documents detail the extent to which the US has become addicted to the export of death and destruction. According to that document, the US leads the world in the manufacture, sale and distribution of WMD, the use of 'terrorist' tactics and PSYOPS, and overt acts of aggression that when done by smaller nations are called 'terrorism'. US military spending is greater than that spent by the rest of the world’s nations combined. As the US claims to 'defend' Democracy, it subverts it. How is the US truly concerned about terrorists acquiring WMD when it is the US that leads the world in the manufacture, sale and distribution of WMD? WMD are a big chunk of our GDP. Military spending, generally, is by far the biggest slice of the pie. The US is in the death business.
Anything said by the GOP about 'terrorism' or the failing US economy is either a bald-faced lie or said disingenuously, in bad faith. Anything said by the GOP about the economy must be weighed against the GOP agenda du jour: figure out a way to pin the rap on Obama! GOP focus groups have been tasked with coming up with up with plausible cover stories that can be 'sold' to the public.
Earlier, Bushie Reaganheads tried to blame Clinton for the consequences of twelve long years in which Reagan and Bush --by way of Reagan's tax cut of 1982 --looted the nation, transferred wealth upward from working folk to lazy, unproductive 'elites', offshore to tax havens and overseas to potential enemies and the MIC. As a result, the US will have no shortage of enemies and real 'terrorists' many of whom are financed with US monies and US government blessings. There has been a very high price paid for years of GOP-Oh-nomics, an era defined by the preferential treatment shown the privileged class, an era in which 'real income' and purchasing power declined.
The merchandise trade deficit reached a record $847 billion in 2007, but declined to $810 billion in 2008, as a depreciating exchange rate for the dollar against most major currencies discouraged US imports and made US exports more competitive abroad. The global economic downturn, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, investment bank failures, falling home prices, and tight credit pushed the United States into a recession by mid-2008. To help stabilize financial markets, the US Congress established a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in October 2008. The government used some of these funds to purchase equity in US banks and other industrial corporations. In January 2009 the US Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed a bill providing an additional $787 billion fiscal stimulus - two-thirds on additional spending and one-third on tax cuts - to create jobs and to help the economy recover.--CIA, World FactbookIf the US trails the world in exports, it is fair to ask how the US stays afloat. The answer is ugly. As the US ceased to export significant amounts of product during the Reagan years, China found, in our decline, an opportunity. They would buy bucks, so that the US could afford to buy the products of Chinese industry. Under the missrules of Herrs Reagan and Bush, the US became a vassal state of China.
The US benefited from the world addiction to oil. Demand for the dollar was supported by the fact that oil was traded in dollars on world markets, prominently, the Iranian Oil Bourse. If, for example, a nation's currency was francs, it had first to trade those francs for bucks in order to buy oil. In the meantime, the US found another product that it could export: world terrorism!
- Acts of aggression and terrorism
- Material support of terrorist organizations
- The sale of arms and other military hardware [See: Terrorism is worse under GOP regimes]
1-21. Waging protracted IW depends on building global capability and capacity. IW will not be won by the United States alone but rather through combined efforts with multinational partners. Combined IW will require the joint force to establish a long-term sustained presence in numerous countries to build partner capability and capacity. This capability and capacity extends U.S. operational reach, multiplies forces available, and provides increased options for defeating adversaries. The constituent activities of IW are:Ignoring 1) the mountainous body of evidence that US policy and the CIA, specifically, is the root-cause of the vast majority of the what is commonly called 'world terrorism'; and 2) the equally impressive body of hard evidence that 911 was an inside job, the Army cites 911 as the pretext by which the US should embark upon the policy as outlined above.1-22. The above list of operations and activities can be conducted within IW;--Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare, September 2008
- Insurgency.
- COIN.
- UW.
- Terrorism
- CT.
- FID.
- Stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) operations.
- Strategic communication (SC).
- PSYOP.
- Civil-military operations (CMO).
- Information operations (IO).
- Intelligence and counterintelligence (CI) activities.
- Transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms dealing, and illegal financial transactions that support or sustain IW.
- Law enforcement activities focused on countering irregular adversaries.
1-18. The 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States highlighted the increased danger of warfare conducted by other-than-state enemies. Recognizing that such irregular threats by nonstate actors would be a likely and even dominant pattern throughout the 21st century, national policy makers dictated that planners must analyze and prepare for such irregular threats. It was clear that previous assumptions about the terms “conventional,” “traditional,” or “regular” warfare, and reliance solely on a “regular” or “conventional warfare” doctrine were inadequate. IW was a significant theme in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report. In April 2006, the Pentagon drafted the execution roadmap for IW as a means of combating this growing threat from actions beyond conventional state-to-state military conflict.--Headquarters, Department of the Army, Army Special Operations Forces Unconventional Warfare, September 2008Elsewhere, the document cites the threat posed to the US by "WMD—such as nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. But I have yet to find a single word, phrase, sentence or paragraph in which the manual mentions the threat posed to the rest of the world by some forty years or more of US meddling, threats, covert operations, US sponsored assassinations, overt threats, bombing and/or war and invasion. Instead, we get platitudes that are made absolutely meaningless by the remainder of the Army document.
A-64. Democracy and the protection of fundamental liberties were the basis for the creation of the United States more than 200 years ago. Since then, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been to promote respect for democracy and human rights throughout the world. The DOS— .. Promotes democracy as a way to achieve security, stability, and prosperity for the entire world. .. Helps establish and assist newly formed democracies. op citThe US Army document is an arrogant, imperialistic and ill-considered response to a growing 'threat' --but a threat that is posed only to US monopolists and death merchants, i.e., the Military/Industrial Complex, a fancy name for Murder, Inc. The US has squandered the limitless goodwill that had been extended our nation at the end of World War II.This blog predicted the impending financial collapse several times during Bush's illegal occupancy of the Oval Office. Here is one of them.
It's been over seven years since the US had real or competent leadership and now a neo-ape man may precipitate our return to the cave! Iran threatens Bush's simplistic view of the world as well as the coffers of "big oil". Iran, isolated by mysteriously cut internet cables, will this month begin trading oil in currencies other than the dollar. Bush's cave man solution: nuke Iran! Kill, kill!Bush's response to Iran's "Oil Bourse", as you may recall, was, typically, pre-stone age. At the time I posted the article excerpted above, I predicted that the US empire would collapse and with it, the dollar. We will continue to pay and suffer the consequences for having let Bush get away with stealing the White House and occupying it illegally. AddendumI hate to say I told you so --but:On September 16 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire was as dead, theoretically, as its predecessor, the British. Our empire was seventy-one years old and had been in ill financial health since 1968. Like most modern empires, ours rested not so much on military prowess as on economic primacy.--Gore Vidal, Chapter Three of Imperial America (Nation Books, 2005)
Sixteen years ago, two economists published a research paper with a delightfully simple title: “Looting.”The economists were George Akerlof, who would later win a Nobel Prize, and Paul Romer, the renowned expert on economic growth. In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses.
In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information.
The investors “acted as if future losses were somebody else’s problem,” the economists wrote. “They were right.”
On Tuesday morning in Washington, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave a speech that read like a sad coda to the “Looting” paper. Because the government is unwilling to let big, interconnected financial firms fail — and because people at those firms knew it — they engaged in what Mr. Bernanke called “excessive risk-taking.” To prevent such problems in the future, he called for tougher regulation....
Above all, as Mr. Romer says, the federal government needs the power and the will to take over a firm as soon as its potential losses exceed its assets. Anything short of that is an invitation to loot.
Mr. Bernanke actually took a step in this direction on Tuesday. He said the government “needs improved tools to allow the orderly resolution of a systemically important nonbank financial firm.” In layman’s terms, he was asking for a clearer legal path to nationalization.
At a time like this, when trust in financial markets is so scant, it may be hard to imagine that looting will ever be a problem again. But it will be. If we don’t get rid of the incentive to loot, the only question is what form the next round of looting will take.
It all started when Cramer got perturbed by a segment TDS did on CNBC's financial network (Jon Stewart Eviscerates CNBC and Rick Santelli ).He was so mad that he showed up on a bunch of NBC shows crying about the way he was portrayed. Stewart really just said what all of America wanted to say to Wall Street: F*&K You!Tonight we had the big face-off, the heavyweight bout, the Super Bowl square-off between CNBC's Jim Cramer and Comedy Central's Jon Stewart. Cramer was especially upset about being included in a segment TDS produced on the horrible and almost criminal reporting CNBC has been airing as THE go-to business network after CNBC's Rick Santelli attacked average working-class people who got caught up in the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Santelli dubbed them as "losers." Well, the only loser tonight was Cramer and CNBC.Jim basically sat there, starry-eyed like a lost puppy, and was virtually silent throughout the three-segment show featuring him. He basically waved the white flag and said, "You got me."--Crooks and Liars, Jon Stewart creams Jim Cramer on the Daily Show!
5 comments:
"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." - John Maynard Keynes
End the Fed, BoE, IMF et al; this crisis would all disappear in a few years imo.
AdamS sez...
"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. --Keynes
Keynes got it right and that's why GOP types hate him.
End the Fed, BoE, IMF et al
A strong, central bank was Alexander Hamilton's dream! It is our nightmare!
Um...in denial much?
The rest of the Keynes quote is more important, no? "...By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved (eg the $8 trillion or more stolen during the '700bn' bailout).
How can you say "Keynes got it right" and just ignore the obvious face-value interpretation of the quote, that Keynes *wanted* to ruin the citizenry?
I don't think Keynesian economics is necessarily bad; in fact, it's genius that he came up with a way to have a parasitic fraud at the heart of an economy and yet keep up the pretence of prosperity. But it does nothing more.
People are coming to the realisation that their fiat currency has 0 real market value. The dirty little Keynesian secret (I know, it's hardly a secret, but the average person tends to ignore the fact anyway) is of course that the money that is 'created' brings with it the bondage of debt and interest paid for by the government, via taxes.
This is why I genuinely believe only the death of Keynesianism and Fabian socialism will bring about a new era of genuine prosperity (i.e. one not built upon a wobbling tower of derivatives, fractional reserve banking and fiat currency).
PS I don't get what you said, you defended Keynes but said a strong central bank was "our nightmare". So are you for or against Keynesianism/central banks?
AdamS sez...
How can you say "Keynes got it right" and just ignore the obvious face-value interpretation of the quote, that Keynes *wanted* to ruin the citizenry?
Keynes never advocated the ruin of citizenry. Nor --did he advocate that currency be debauched.
He simply made the observation that IF you wished to destroy the capitalist system, then you need only to DEBAUCH the currency. That'll do it everytime.
In this instance, Keynes' remarks are relevant in that I suspect the 'elites' --having already gotten rich beyond our abilities to visualize or conceive --no longer have an interest in sustaining the system. Their wealth has already been 'exported' and 'converted'. Their message to us is: "I'm allright, jack! And Fuck you!"
You seem to have confused a statement of fact with a moral imperative, a commandment. Keynes, in fact a 'conservative', himself had an interest in sustaining the capitalist system.
Keynes is accused of much in the US, indeed, he is often the target of a right wing label attack: LIBERAL, LIBERAL! But NO ONE ever credibly accuse Keynes of trying to bring down the capitalist system.
1) An expert investor, KEYNES himself got rich off the capitalist system. He knew where to put his own money and practiced what he preached. He lived very, very comfortably in Bloomsbury.
2) KENYES was 'liberal' only in so far as his policies would have put more money in the hands of those who might actually spend it and thus stimulate the CAPITALIST economy.
To the extent that Keynes was interested in preserving market economies by making them work, he was a CONSERVATIVE. He was more conservative than I am.
Nevertheless, Keynes is to be preferred over ANY OTHER economist (save Marx) whose policies have actually been put to the test. In the US, that would be Friedman --whom I've met and interviewed and whom I believe is DEAD WRONG on just about everything.
In the US, the 'spectrum' is skewed. Keynes, in fact a conservative, is considered to be unaccepatably 'liberal' and Friedman, whom I considered to be reactionary and to the right of Attita the Hun, is thought by Americans to be 'mainstream'. Go figure!
If there is any lesson to be learned from all this, it is:
1) conservative economics has failed utterly;
2)'supply side economics is BULLSHIT;
3) Keynes was right about many, perhaps, most things economic;
4) Friedman was full o' shit;
5) Marx and Ricardo were abso-fuckin-lutely correct:
LABOR is the ULTIMATE source of all value.
Economies are DEPRESSED when monies are removed from circulation.
Giving ONLY rich folk a WHOPPING TAX CUT effectively REMOVES MONIES from circulation; thus EVERY US tax cut since 1982 has had a depressing (in the economic sense) effect on the economy. The official stats from the BEA, US Bureau of Labor Stats, and the U.S. Commerce Dept - BEA confirm me.
So are you for or against Keynesianism/central banks?
This is not about opposition or support for Keynes. Last time I checked, he was still dead. I don't know what Keynes might have written about the rise of multi-nationals, global finance and the effective demise of 'labor'.
Essential 'Keynesianism' is not incompatible with the dissolution of the 'big banks'. If anyone had known their Achilles heel, it might have been Keynes. In any case, those opposing the big banks, had best read and udnerstand their Keynes.
My position is that the WORLD economic system is at the point of imminent collapse because wealth has been deliberately and systematically TRANSFERRED upward.
The big banks are both symptomatic of the process and willing co-conspirators . Unless, the world reverts to barter, there will always be banks. Big business required big, rich banks. Global business requires bigger banks. Nations --bigger still.
The BIG banks would not exist if WEALTH had not created a tiny, ruling elite of just one percent of the US population. The big banks are both the product of the transfer and a servant of the elite class that was thus created.
The figures may differ somewhat in Europe...but I have no reason to believe that, in an age of 'globalism' and super-multi-nationals that the distribution of wealth is not similarly lopsided throughout the industrialized world.
I detest this 'Brave New World' --but I've yet to see any movement that either 1) understands what has happened and 2) has a clue about how things might get changed!
I certainly don't have a panacea...and, sadly, no one else does either.
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