How the War Depresses the U.S. Economy

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The cost of Bush's war on Iraq, left to Obama to 'finish' and clean up, passed the one trillion dollar mark some time ago but has yet to support or prove the old lie that 'wars are good for the economy'. Where is the evidence that the $Trillion$ spent murdering and torturing people in a nation that was, in fact, no threat to the United States, has created a single job on the home front? In fact, those $Trillion$ blown up in Iraq are lost forever --not having created a single new job.

Instead, manpower that might have been employed in productive industries was diverted to destructive and false causes. Instead of creating futures, we will be lucky to escape a tragic end!

The fact is, war is parasitic, destructive not of enemies but of the home front economy. Even if the U.S. should win militarily, the war is lost on the home front where it continues to be paid for by the subversive and depressive effect it has had upon productive industries and activities that provide real jobs, viable opportunities, exports!

War is not only a 'racket', as Gen. Smedley Butler so famously declared, it is a parasite!

What is often overlooked is the military example Bastiat uses in the essay. He discusses the demobilization of one hundred thousand soldiers from the French army – a prospect many entertain with dread, for what will these men do for a living? And what about the foregone stimulus to French businesses previously provided by the military’s expenditures on wine, clothes, and weapons for these men? Of course, such critics are focusing once again only on what is seen. They fail to consider that the money that had previously been confiscated from the taxpayers in order to support the soldiers will now be available for other purposes, including expenditures on goods that these demobilized soldiers can devote themselves to producing. Likewise, the money the military once spent on wine, clothes, and weapons can now be spent on other things, so here again economic activity is none the worse for the soldiers’ demobilization

--Thomas Woods, Jr., The Neglected Costs of the Warfare State

Only the Military/Industrial complex benefits from war; what is good for the MIC is NOT good for the country. The MIC is a drag on the economy, an economic black hole into which is drained the economic and creative resources of the nation. War itself is a Faustian bargain in which the soul of a nation is eagerly exchanged for short-term war booty, in this case, oil! When the U.S. itself produced oil, jobs were created in the 'drilling industry'. Stealing the oil resources of a foreign nation which had nothing whatsoever to do with 911 has surely created a net deficit of jobs as the final figures, I am sure, will prove.

The war of aggression against the people of Iraq by an imperial nation will be shown to have been the primary cause of the recent economic crises, all which are related to the more fundamental fact that the U.S. is no longer a productive nation. The proof of that may be found at the CIA's 'World Fact Book' which lists the U.S. at the bottom of a list with the world's largest negative 'Current Account Balance'; China tops the list with the world's largest positive 'Current Account Balance'. If the U.S. were still productive and exporting the products of its labor, it would at least be nearer the top! But the U.S. is on the very rock bottom, a position resulting directly from the incompetence of GOP regimes: Nixon, Reagan, Bush and Bush!

As Gore Vidal maintained in his 'Decline and Fall of the American Empire', the economic benefits of building a tank are temporary. Once built, the tank is a drag, requiring more to upkeep than war booty can justify. In the meantime, monies used to build the tank are lost to outcomes more productive at home and less destructive abroad, outcomes upon which a viable economy absolutely depends. In the end, only the military contractors building the tank or maintaining it have benefited but they will have done so at taxpayer expense. In the end, the building of a tank and the other weapons of war will have returned absolutely nothing for the investment. The taxpayer will have underwritten a war crime with their taxes. On a larger scale, the Pentagon itself is an economic black hole, having sucked the life blood from the US economy.

The idea that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy is sold and promoted. In fact, new studies now confirm what I have always believed and what Gore Vidal had stated in his classic: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate's Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been "weakening the American economy" and "a day of reckoning" has finally arrived.

--Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

Now --war critics have the economic data and models proving that military spending 'diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment.' This thesis is likewise confirmed in a paper by Thomas E. Woods at: http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/woods2.pdf

Sadly, few progressives have had the courage to state the obvious: the war against Iraq is 'instant Karma', its own revenge upon the deterioration of American values and its converse: the rise of imperial arrogance and the resulting fascist state! While still in office, Bush stated that "spending on the war might help with jobs"! Consider the psychopathic arrogance betrayed in that one statement alone! Bush said, in effect, that it is OK to murder people abroad if it provides jobs at home. It is OK to wage war upon civilians in order to juice up jobs on the home front. Doubly tragic, it failed even that. Chalk up yet another cold-blooded lie to Bush and his crime syndicate --the GOP!

When the stats are all in, Bush Jr will rank with his father and Ronald Reagan among the very worst U.S Presidents in terms of job growth/creation, worst among all U.S. Presidents in terms of GDP growth! Claims that the 'recession' was due to a 'housing bubble' are hollow, disingenuous, or, at best, naive! In the meantime, the GOP will willingly bomb hell out of a sovereign nation which it knew had no WMD in order to get the jobless off the streets of shell cities like Detroit and into the front lines in Iraq. Ancient Rome could not have been or done worse and didn't!

The heights of absurdity issued from the mouths of those who should know better, specifically, Desmond Lachman, economist and resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He said that simply removing the billions of dollars a year in Iraq spending from the economy without replacing it could actually make the recession worse, because the spending drives demand and keeps people employed. "War spending helped the U.S. get out of the Great Depression," Lachman says. He misses at least two points while betraying a psychopathic lack of 'humanity'. Lachman, in effect, believes that Iraqi lives are worthless and that their deaths are but a means by which Americans may avoid an inconvenience or temporary hardship. Additionally --he is wrong about 'war' as an economic cure-all. For example, the U.S. did not begin a real or lasting recovery until about one year after World War II was over and therefore could not have contributed to the recovery. The other point missed is that those moneys 'blown up' in Iraq have now been lost forever to the U.S. economy. Result: contraction. The other word for contraction is 'depression'.

White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was the exception to the rule, offering an "upper bound" estimate of $100 billion to $200 billion in a September 2002 interview with The Wall Street Journal. That figure raised eyebrows at the time, although Lindsey argued the cost was small, adding, "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”

--Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion

The U.S. has been in a state of perpetual war since the so-called Spanish-American war made of this nation an empire. But it was, specifically, according to Gore Vidal in The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, the moment at which the US became a net debtor nation that the US empire ceased to be a viable nation. It is fair to ask: is America a 'failed state'?

Americans are led to believe that the US can simply 'war' its way out of economic disaster. In fact, the US fights wars with monies it doesn't have in the expectation of booty it may never realize, booty that, in any case, has never benefited the economy. The Iraq war may, indeed, finish us off.

Washington, DC: The Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report today estimating the economic impact of increased US military spending comparable to the spending on the Iraq war. The report, presenting the results of a simulation from the economic forecasting company Global Insight, shows the increased level of military spending leads to fewer jobs and slower economic growth.

For the report, The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending, by economist Dean Baker, CEPR commissioned Global Insight to run a simulation with its macmacroeconomic del. Global Insight's model was selected for this analysis because it is a commonly used and widely respected model. It estimated the impact of an increase in annual US military spending equal to 1 percent of GDP (approximately equal to the military spending increase compared with pre-September 11th baseline).

The projections show the following:

-- After an initial demand stimulus, the effect of increased military spending turns negative around the sixth year. After 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in the baseline scenario with lower defense spending.

-- Inflation and interest rates are considerably higher. After 5 years, the interest rate on 10-Year Treasury notes is projected to be 0.7 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario. After 10 years, the gap would rise to 0.9 percentage points.

-- Higher interest rates lead to reduced demand in the interest-sensitive sectors of the economy. After 5 years, annual car and truck sales are projected to go down by 192,200 in the high military spending scenario. After 10 years, the drop is projected to be 323,300 and after 20 years annual sales are projected to be down 731,400.

-- Construction and manufacturing are the sectors that are projected to experience the largest shares of the job loss.

"It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy," said Baker. "In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."

The report recommends that Congress request the Congressional Budget Office produce its own projections of the economic impact of a sustained increase in defense spending. If wars are disastrous for the economy, then why does government insist upon fighting them when clearly 'national security' is simply not at risk?

--Report Shows Increased US Military Spending Slows Economy

America's ruling elite have found nirvana --a war which need never end, a war in which victory is impossible to define and would not be recognized, a war in which victory is, in fact, impossible. A war which achieves precisely what it is intended to achieve: the enrichment of a tiny ruling elite for whom your rights mean absolutely nothing.

For big government we now have "The Perfect War," everywhere and nowhere, secret and interminable. The war will justify ever expanding police powers, higher taxes, and more controls over the citizenry. You can see easily how Washington thrives on war. Since Sept 11th, there have been no nasty challenges to government spending and waste, no tedious debates over things like social security "lockboxes," nor "political" attacks upon the Presidency. Congressmen and Think Tank experts get lots of TV time and most everyone jumps to obey government orders and support more regulations. Any groups opposed to American military interventions overseas appear unpatriotic and are marginalized, while press coverage of the war is restricted, using the last Gulf War as a model. Big Government, as Orwell wrote, thrives from unwinnable wars; it doesn't get any better than this.

--John Basil Utley, Alternative to Unending War, Ludwig von Mises Institute

War is no longer waged by nations but by huge multi-national corporations. They have hijacked the apparatus of state in order to wage war, and wage war in order to maintain elite status. It's a malevolent scheme in which a ruling elite of just one percent of the population benefits from the U.S. war crime against the people of Iraq. Simply, the big corporations --of late accorded rights that should, by right, belong only to real people --make their 'living' killing real people. Real people are now victimized by a souless machine with whom the U.S. Supreme Court is complicit, ergo: illegitimate! The 'Supremes' have anointed Moloch.

The most obvious beneficiaries of this new 'Moloch' are gun and armament manufacturers and the hired killers of Blackwater, Bush's Praetorian Guard.

A tyrant is a single ruler holding vast, if not absolute power through a state or in an organization. The term carries connotations of a harsh and cruel ruler who place their own interests or the interests of a small oligarchy over the best interests of the general population which they govern or control. This mode of rule is referred to as tyranny. Many individual rulers or government officials get accused of tyranny, with the label almost always a matter of controversy.

- Tyranny

One is reminded of John Maynard Keynes' prescription for full employment.

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.

Certainly --there are more productive, meaningful and creative ways of keeping the genius and labor of good people employed for the greater good of our species and the precious earth we live on. Keynes was correct, however, when he proposes that just 'digging' up bank notes in a landfill is preferable to the destructive and insidious 'industry of war'!

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Why GOP Policies Are a Cruel Fraud

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

As U.S. GDP declines during GOP regimes, it does so because 'wealth' is literally transferred upward to a 'ruling elite' class, a laundered pay-off to the 'base'. At present, just one percent of the nation's total population owns, by some estimates, more wealth than is owned by about 95 percent of the rest of the population. ^*

This is the culmination of a trend that began in the era of infamous 'robber barons'. Their banker of choice was J.P. Morgan. The trend reversed during WWII but resumed with Ronald Reagan's tax cut for the very wealthy in 1982.

Wealth inequalities are measured with the GINI index. These indices always rise as GDPs decline during depression years. The effect of GOP tax cuts are best visualized in graphics based upon the data that is available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau.

Few make the connection between declines in GDP and 'transfers of wealth' upward to an increasingly tiny elite. Fewer connect these trends with the periodic recessions/depressions which are historically/mathematically more numerous during GOP regimes. The 'Great Depression' which began during the Hoover administration was clearly the result of the preceding GOP administrations of Warren G. Harding (a George Bush of his day) and Calvin Coolidge.

Historically, the U.S. is most productive when it is egalitarian. The era beginning with the end of World War II is the best example. It was an era of egalitarian growth and prosperity that did begin to end until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan.

The automobile industry successfully converted back to producing cars, and new industries such as aviation and electronics grew by leaps and bounds. A housing boom, stimulated in part by easily affordable mortgages for returning members of the military, added to the expansion. The nation's gross national product rose from about $200,000 million in 1940 to $300,000 million in 1950 and to more than $500,000 million in 1960. At the same time, the jump in postwar births, known as the "baby boom," increased the number of consumers. More and more Americans joined the middle class.

--The Post War Economy: 1945-1960

Democracy is the first victim of militarism. Today, Germany, which is said to have lost WWII, is the world’s largest exporter of manufactured goods, ahead of China for whom the U.S. is just a place to dump product while it pollutes its own environment. To make the point even more dramatically, German wages and benefits today are higher than those in America even as it maintains a much higher and better 'safety net'. Germany alone disproves just about everything the GOP ever told you about economics.

The GOP is mum on several facts, specifically, that periodic depressions are beneficial to ruling elites. It is during depressions that they get richer and everyone else gets poorer. It is during periods in which prices decline that the 'robber baron' mentality picks up bargains among stocks and properties. But even worse, market panics are triggered when 'traders' decide that the time has come to take their profits or, as was often said in the sixties: 'take the money and run!'.

The timing of rallies is controlled by and for the benefit of concentrated wealth which alone has the power to control the behavior of markets. A small trader is generally just kidding himself. A small trader is probably a stupid trader or, more accurately, stupid because he/she indulges the delusion that he can 'play' with the big boys. In fact, the big boys have the power to change the rules and do so when it is beneficial to them. Big money controls big money movements. The market is by and for the rich; the chances you will get rich by 'trading' are slim and none.

Hoover said of the jobless/homeless 'Let them sell oranges and pushcarts from a cart!' The Great Depression was followed and was the result of the transfer of wealth upward, a trend that had begun with the GOP regimes of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. A careful study of the Great Depression is the best evidence, the proof of everything posited here.

Why a 'flat tax' is a scam

How is wealth re-distributed? It is to the GOPs advantage that a so-called 'flat tax' only sounds equitable but is --in fact --the most unfair, the most inequitable tax of all. A flat ten percent will cut into what you budget for essentials --housing, food, and transportation to and from your job if you are lucky enough to have one. Ten percent of several millions each year has absolutely NO affect on the amount of monies the super-rich spend on food, housing and clothing. A 'flat tax', therefore, is an unfair tax.

Taxes raise revenues from all taxpayers yet redistribute disproportionately among the top 1% of income earners via the tax cut. Simply, money is taken out of my pocket and put into the pocket of a George Bush fat-cat!

A bankrupt nation cannot be either productive or wealthy

GOP policies since the rise of Ronald Reagan have made of the U.S. the world's largest net debtor nation with the world's largest negative current account balance. China, to whom the US has been sold and sold out, boasts the world's largest positive current account balance.

The 'Great Depression' followed a period in which wealth had become increasingly concentrated in very few hands proportionally. It occurred during a period in which an increasingly tiny elite had become increasingly, obscenely wealthy while many more, millions became increasingly, extremely poor. Death by starvation increased. What do you think caused the great depression? It was a top heavy collapse! When those who had 'engineered' the boom had milked it to the max, they took their 'winnings' and dealt themselves out. Margin speculators were caught flat-footed. The House of cards collapsed.

Wealthy, healthy economies are productive economies. Every major economist agrees: labor creates value. It follows, therefore, that the most egalitarian societies are the most productive societies. Conversely --those societies, like the US, in which just one percent owns more than some 90 to 95 percent of the rest of the population combined are --as to be expected --the very least productive. A society which is no longer productive should expect to find itself at the bottom of the CIAs World Fact Book with the world's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance, sometimes called the balance of trade deficit. Click the link and scroll down. You will find the U.S. on the very bottom of the list, enslaved by China which alone benefits from the U.S. consumer's addiction to Wal-Mart.

As its position at the bottom of the CIA's list proves, the US, as a result of the policies of the Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr and, later, Bush Jr, has become a third world nation, the World's Largest Net Debtor nation. Simply --the US is bankrupt.

The U.S. is Bankrupt!

It may have been John Maynard Keynes who said: "If you want a prosperous economy, you must create wealth." If it was not, it's true in any case. A nation which does not produce does not create value. A nation that does not create value i.e, 'wealth' is either bankrupt or headed there.

A nation that has disparaged labor should expect to slide into Third World Status. Every major economist --from David Ricardo to Paul Krugman, from Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes --has recognized the truth of the Labor Theory of Value. The way to create 'wealth' by putting money to work. Wealth is not created by 'outsourcing' jobs, most recently, to China. Wealth is not created by rewarding an idle elite investor class with whopping tax cut which inevitably wind up in tax havens offshore. Tax windfalls winding up in offshore tax havens is money that is perhaps forever lost to the American economy. The results of GOP tax cuts are 'contractions' of the economy as evidenced by real declines in monies circulated.

Egalitarian nations are not only more productive and prosperous, they are are happier, a fact that is revealed in numerous studies. People in such societies enjoy a much higher standard of living than is found in those nations like the US which has been plundered to bankruptcy by the right wing and the Republican party specifically.

The recession of 1990 began four months before Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge, in July 1990; Bush signed his tax increases into law in November 1990.

I was asked the following question: "You do realize Keynes's theories were demolished in the 1970's right?"

When I stopped laughing, I responded:

FACT: OVER 24 MILLION JOBS WERE CREATED DURING THE 70s:
While ONLY about 18 million jobs were created in the 80s.

3.4 percent more of the population was put to work during the 70s but only 2.6 percent during the 80s.

Reagan-heads falsely claim that Reagan's was the longest peacetime expansion since World War II. The truth is the Kennedy-Johnson expansion was considerably longer: 106 months compared to Reagan's 92.1

Sadly for right wingers and/or supply-siders and Reagan's adoring, non-thinking multitude, it was Keynesian economics that was responsible for the longest economic boom in the post World War II era. The GOP adoration of Milton Friedman is misplaced. Friedman does not have the track record to disprove anything that resulted as a result of the application of Keynesian principles.

It is sometimes said by those leaning right wing that "...attempts to push up demand at the expense of the "wealthy" have always failed miserably and always will fail. " Bluntly --this is a strawman fallacy but undermines 'conservative' arguments' that cutting taxes for the rich stimulates the economy. The burden of proof is on conservatives to name a single time in the 20th century that productivity increased following a 'tax cut' benefiting only the wealthy. It has not happened once! Not one time! Ever! It is time to consign this bullshit to the dustbin of history. I tire of writing about it.

Keynesian economics --not Milton Friedman -- may and should claim credit for the 80s. Some have tried to rewrite history, saying that Reagan was --in fact --a closet Keynesian. If that were so, why does 'Keynesian' policies work for Democrats but not for the GOP. The facts of the matter are this: 1) Reagan's tax cut of 1982 was quickly followed by a depression of some two years, the deepest and worst since the great depression of 1929. The very definition of 'depression' involves a contraction of the money supply. That raises the question: if the tax cut benefited anyone, then where did the money go? Where, indeed, did it go? Did anyone bother to check the offshore accounts of those benefiting from the tax cut? Did anyone bother to correlate the contraction of the projected U.S. money supply with actual increases in accounts offshore? Is there, in fact, anyway to police these robber barons?

The Reagan/Friedman era is a TOTAL FAILURE

The fact is: the US has the lowest general tax rate in the entire industrialized world and, at the same time, the very worst savings and investment rates! Nothing predicted by Friedman came to pass. Instead of jobs, we got depression. Instead of universal increases in the standard of living, the standard of living declined for every but the upper quintile, Reagan's base.

As a result of Friedman's policies and during the Reagan regime a trend began that was not reversed until Clinton's second term, that is: only the very wealthy benefited and only the very, very wealthy got even richer. Everyone else lost ground. That's right. If you were only middle class, even upper middle class, you lost ground. Concurrent with this trend was Reagan's 'Recession', in fact, a 'depression' of some two years in which the nation's GDP declined and millions were made homeless and forced to live in tents under bridges even in boomtown Houston.

The following chart is from the U.S. Commerce Department - Bureau of Economic Analysis. It just about sums it all up in terms of job growth. That's because a nation that is not working is an economy that is not working.

Job Growth Per Year Under Most Recent Presidents8



Johnson   3.8% 

Carter    3.1 

Clinton   2.4 

Kennedy   2.3 

Nixon     2.3 

Reagan    2.1 

Bush      0.6



Source: US DEPT OF COMMERCE - BEA

Three well-known Republicans pull up the rear: Nixon, Reagan, Bush. All are failures.

I am asked:

If government is so great at wealth redistribution and running the economy, what about the Great Depression?

That's too easy. The question itself betrays an appalling ignorance of U.S. history. My critic may never have heard of Calvin Coolidge, may never have known about the feverish stock market speculation, margin purchases, the heady almost euphoric belief that unfettered laissez-faire capitalism could turn ordinary schmucks into new J.P. Morgans or Rockefellars. It was all an illusion, smoke and mirrors, a cruel hoax, a fraud!

The Great Depression was the result of the policies of every GOP Prez since Woodrow Wilson and resulted when 'wealth' was re-distributed upward under the regimes of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. All three were Republicans and Hoover was President at the time of the 1929 crash.

It was Hoover who said of the jobless/homeless: "Let them sell oranges from a pushcart"! And, much later, it was Reagan who said that homeless folk living under bridges were crazy and accused a 'welfare grandma' of driving a Cadillac. The fact of the matter is, there was NO such 'gran'ma'. Reagan lied his ass off! Hey! He was a Republican!

^* sources: U.S. Department of Commerce - BEA, Bureau of Labor Statistics

Karl Marx On Capitalism

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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Exposing Lies About the FED, the CIA, the Murder of JFK

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

New allegations about CIA involvment in the murder of JFK put a glaring spotlight on the current bankster crisis. Those who pull off crimes are, naturally, most motivated to lie about them! The CIA, therefore, looks very guilty of two murders that ripped America apart: the murders of JFK and RFK.

As news broke this week that CIA lies about the JFK murder had been exposed, I recalled that among the motives for JFK's murder was his threat to abolish the FED, the very source of the government's 'funny money' and most certainly, the root cause of the current banking collapse. JFK had threatened to strip the power of the FED, smash the CIA into 'a thousand pieces' and abolish the oil industry's sacred cow: the Oil Depletion Allowance. No President since has dared piss off so many powerful and ruthless people.

JFK tried to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest

The move would have bypassed the Fed by restoring to the government the power and authority to issue currency. Executive Order 11110 gave the US government the ability to create its own money --backed by silver! It just might have put the FED out of business.

Some background and basic economics: to pay it's bills, the US government borrows money from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The Federal Reserve Notes are not backed up by anything. 'Silver certificates' issued under the authority of JFKs order would have been backed up by government owned silver. The government would no longer borrow from the FED to pay its obligations. It would have done so with 'silver certificates' issued by the government itself.
Like any commodity, Federal Reserve notes are subject to the laws of supply and demand. The demand for Federal Reserve notes might have collapsed altogether and the FED itself might have been forced out of business.

Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level. It would have would have made it possible for the government to repay its debt without having to borrow worthless 'notes' from the Fed and having to repay them later at interest.
Executive Order 11110 was never repealed. One wonders why no other President ever bothered to utilize it. Could it have had anything to do with the fact that JFKs order made him very, very unpopular throughout the banking establishment? JFK was brutally murdered in Dallas just five months after issuing the order. No more silver certificates were issued. The FED's gravy train was still intact.

FED owners do not have ready access to $trillions$ needed to float the U.S. debt and deficit. They don't need it! The FED 'creates' money with a bookkeeping entry, writing out a check to the US government in exchange for US bonds. Cashing the check is easy; the US Government banks at the Federal Reserve.

It's a scam in which no "real" money, no hard currency is exchanged. Government agents are never seen walking out of the FED offices --under armed guard --carrying bullion, coins, or, indeed, anything of real value. The Fed makes an 'entry' in the books! The government makes an entry in its books!

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
--Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, I believe, had foreseen what has happened in fact. That is the context in which the latest news should be considered.

The October 17 Times story was another such example. It revealed, perhaps for the first time in any major US newspaper, that the CIA has been deceiving the public about its own relationship to the JFK assassination.

On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The CIA hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in CIA support during 1963. In August 1963, Oswald visited a New Orleans shop owned by a directorate official, feigning sympathy with the group’s goal of ousting Mr. Castro. A few days later, directorate members found Oswald handing out pro-Castro pamphlets and got into a brawl with him. Later that month, he debated the anti-Castro Cubans on a local radio station.

That the October 17 story was published at all is astonishing. According to Lexis Nexis, there have only been two earlier references to the CIA Joannides documents controversy in any major US newspaper: a brief squib in the New York Daily News in 2003 announcing the launching of the case, and a letter to the New York Times in 2007 (of which the lead author was Jeff Morley) complaining about the Times’ rave review of a book claiming that Oswald was a lone assassin.

--The JFK Assassination: New York Times Acknowledges CIA Deceptions

Just last year, the BBC reported that it was the CIA that was behind the murder of RFK, JFK's younger brother.

The new video and photographic evidence -- the result of a three year long investigation --"puts three senior CIA operatives" at the scene of the murder.

Three of these men have been positively identified as senior officers who worked together in 1963 at JMWAVE, the CIA's Miami base for its Secret War on Castro.

David Morales was Chief of Operations and once told friends: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard."

Gordon Campbell was Chief of Maritime Operations and George Joannides was Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations. Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the Congressional investigation into the JFK assassination. Now, we see him at the Ambassador Hotel the night a second Kennedy is assassinated.

[See also: CIA Involvement in the assassination Of Robert Kennedy]
--CIA role in Kennedy killing

--Evidence That the CIA Murdered RFK

As with the 1963 murder of JFK in Dallas, lingering questions dog the official theories. Powder burns indicated that three shots had been fired from very close range from 0 to 1-1/2 inches though no witness could place Sirhan closer than three feet. Sirhan's gun held only eight bullets but a total of ten were recovered. Three were found in Kennedy. Two were lodged in a pantry door frame. One was found in an airspace. Presumably four more were found elsewhere. Significantly, four bullets 'touched' Kennedy to include the three that were recovered --lodged --in his back. At no time was Sirhan ever behind RFK.

Inexcusably, the door frames were burned, the Los Angeles Police Dept. claimed no bullets were found lodged in the "bullet holes", and two expended bullets (inexplicably dug out of wood) were soon found in the front seat of Sirhan's car. The LAPD then destroyed their records of the tests that had been done on the "bullet holes" in the doorframe. 

--Facts about the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination

Like the fatal flaws in the official conspiracy theory of 911, the holes in the government's JFK story are fatal.

• No competent or sane sniper/hit man would choose to shoot anyone from the TSBD. The 'view to a kill' was obscured by branches and leaves as photos taken that day prove! It was and remains the worst of several possible locations!
• Zapruder frame 313 proves conclusively that the fatal shot came from the front, the so-called Grassy Knoll
• No sniper in his right mind would choose a kill spot providing no possibility of egress or escape! Oswald would have had to have ditched his rifle and run down some six flights! No 'hit man' would have tried it! It's stupid! The place would have been 'sealed'!
• I have visited Dealy Plaza! The picket fence afforded cover, egress and a clear unobstructed shot of the 'target' from a distance about one third that of a site in TSBD.
• From TSBD, the motorcade is moving laterally and then away; from the picket fence, the target's lateral motion relative to the 'shooter' is minimal. A non-expert could have made the shot but, in fact, it was an expert who did!

I interviewed a witness to the JFK murder many years after the fact. Rosemary Willis was but a child on that fateful day and her story has been ignored by the mainstream media. When we met, she produced several boxes of color slides that had been taken by her father that fateful day in Dealy Plaza.

Referred to in the literature of the assassination as the "little girl in the red dress", she is seen in the Zapruder film running along the south side of Elm Street. Her father, Phillip Willis, taking 35mm color slides, can also be seen in the Zapruder film, looking forward at his daughter, perhaps calling to her. She stops suddenly just as the Presidential limousine is partially blocked by a sign between the motorcade and Abraham Zapruder's camera.

The FBI seized the Willis photos but returned them years later. I looked at them on a light table with a loupe. I immediately recognized Dealy Plaza, the limousine, the motorcade, the Texas School Book Depository, the Pergola, the Grassy Knoll, the Triple Underpass, place names now burned into the consciousness of a scarred nation.

One Phillip Willis took a series of 12 photos of Dealy Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, in the minutes before and after the assassination. Mr. Willis' photos and testimony before the Commission appear in the report.
He was not questioned about the eighth photo, a shot of the Book Depository entrance shortly after the shooting. As Willis later pointed out, one of the men in the photo "looks so much like (Jack Ruby), it's pitiful". FBI agents questioning Willis agreed with him that the man bore a powerful resemblance to Ruby. When Willis mentioned this to the Commission, no interest was shown. When the photo was published in the Warren Report, a considerable part of the face of the Ruby look-alike had been cropped away.

--JFK Conspiracy Theories

At last, Rosemary (if I may be so familiar) pointed out some especially interesting slides. One of them was a shot of the Pergola, above the grassy knoll, taken from her father's position on the south side of Elm Street. Through the columns, all was clear. Then Rosemary produced an old copy of Look Magazine and turned to a double page spread. Reproduced over facing pages was her father's photograph of the limousine with the Pergola behind it.

"Do you notice anything unusual?" she asked.

I had noticed something, something which I now believe was the result of FBI complicity in the cover-up of a murder! In the magazine spread, a train locomotive could plainly be seen between the columns. Indeed, there are railroad tracks in that area to this day as Google earth reveals. Those tracks were there in 1963 as well --as photos of the time reveal. It was in that rail yard that three "tramps" had been arrested prior to the Kennedy assassination. [See: JFK Conspirator Wanted Every Kennedy Dead ]

But why was there a locomotive in the published picture but no locomotive in the "slide"? Rosemary explained that after Look Magazine published her father's pictures, FBI agents took all her father's slides. As I recall, the slides were kept for several years. When they were returned at last, every slide that had depicted the train had been doctored. The train was gone. Only the FBI could have 'removed' the depicted train --but why?

It was clear to me that the answer to that question might very well have solved the JFK murder case! The removal of the train was intended to protect the guilty and it was equally clear that by removing the evidence, the FBI was overtly obstructing justice, protecting the identity/identities of murderers and traitors! The murder of JFK was not just a murder. It was an act of high treason!

Why would the FBI find it necessary to remove a train? What did the FBI find threatening about a train? I've speculated that the train was the egress, the perfect getaway for the assassins who fired the fatal shot from the grassy knoll just as Mark Lane had theorized years ago. That raises the question: why would the FBI protect an assassin's get-away? Unless the FBI was a part of the plot, lately called a coup d'etat, it would not.

However speculative my thoughts, it is fair to say that when you have uncovered the FBI's motive for removing the seemingly innocent picture of a train, you will have gone a long way toward explaining why the Warren Commission insisted upon the theory that the fatal shot came from the rear when any examination of the Zapruder film will reveal otherwise. Those who cover up are guilty! Count on it!

Addendum

Here's more about Rosemary Willis from Wikipedia:

Rosemary Willis (born 1953) was a close witness during the assassination of President Kennedy.

Clearly seen in the Zapruder film at the start of the assassination wearing a white, hooded coat and a red skirt, located to the limousine's left, she runs southwestward and parallel with the limousine. She races for a short while when the limousine was to her direct right.

At Zapruder film frame 190 (hereafter "Z-190"), she is seen slowing, then she stops running. Simultaneous with her slowing/stopping, she slightly turns her head to look upward toward the southwest corner of the Texas School Book Depository.

Immediately after the sitting upright President Kennedy is first hidden at Z-207 by the "Stemmons Freeway" traffic sign in the Zapruder film, Rosemary suddenly, and beginning at Z-214, snaps her head very rapidly 90 to 100 degrees westward --completely away from the depository southwest corner-- within only 0.16 second to then face Abraham Zapruder and the grassy knoll by Z-217.

Precisely 0.60 second after starting her extremely quick westward headsnap towards Mr. Zapruder and the grassy knoll, President Kennedy's head then emerges back into the Zapruder film view at Z-225 still sitting upright with his face and arms already displaying a physical reaction to having already been impacted by a bullet.

Importantly, in 1978 Rosemary was interviewed by investigators from the House Select Committee on Assassinations and stated that she heard at least 4 shots during the assassination. She also stated to the HSCA that while she was still facing the grassy knoll picket fence, she was attracted to view the quick movement of a person who quickly dropped down behind a "wall" out of her view. Rosemary was also documented in the HSCA report that her father, military veteran Phillip Willis, became upset when the Dallas policemen, sheriffs, and detectives --who first quickly ran onto the grassy knoll where he thought the shots came from-- then the authorities ran away from the grassy knoll.

Rosemary's sister, Linda, stated to assassination researcher and author Richard Trask (“Pictures of the Pain” 1994) that after the assassination she and Rosemary also saw someone find a piece of the president's head that had landed in the grass located at least twenty-two feet to the left of the president.

After the assassination Willis, along with her sister, father (Phillip), and mother (Marilyn) were present at the Kodak photographic laboratory getting her father’s assassination related photo slides developed when the Zapruder film was also developed and first shown to approximately nineteen persons.

Rosemary Willis was never called to testify to the Warren Commission.
--Wikipedia, Rosemary Willis

Excellent JFK Documentary

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Why Tax Cuts and Ruinous War Make this Crisis Worse Than the 'Great Depression'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Democrats have occupied the executive but eight of the last thirty years. The GOP, therefore, owns the decline and fall of both the American republic and its short lived empire. GOP policies are the cause of the collapse made even worse by the calamitous and lost war of aggression in Iraq.

Aggravating the crash are the lasting legacy and the bone-headed policies of Reagan, Bush, and Shrub! We are living the consequences of several major, pernicious trends that began with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan:

• the rich began to get much, much richer and the poor much, much poorer
• the labor movement was subverted and all but destroyed;
• within but a few years the US would 'boast' of the world's largest NEGATIVE 'current account balance';
• US industries of all types declined or disappeared entirely;
• acts of terrorism against US interests increased.

All of the above trends reversed but only briefly during the Clinton years, most notably the gaping disparity between filthy rich elites and everyone else. The respite did not last long enough. The administration of the Junior Bush may be thought of as a mere continuation of the decline of the American empire begun under the regimes of Reagan and the senior Bush. Bush Jr will certainly be remembered as a latter-day Nero --insane, self-absorbed, moronic and megalomaniacal. Junior worked to undo the good done by Clinton. It is his only success however dubious and harmful.

A financial collapse is well-underway, thanks to almost thirty years of GOP criminality, insanity, incompetence and greed. But because Americans have not learned the lessons of history, we are now forced to endure a 'crash' that has the potential to be much worse than the depression which followed the crash of 1929. In 1929, the US, at least, had industries that would be resurrected --automotive, steel, mining, construction, and manufacturing of many types.

In Reagan's wake, what is left to fall back on; what is left to be restored? Most of the goods you buy are no longer made in the US. They come from China, Japan, and Taiwan. Programming is done in India. These deals can be traced back to Nixon's famous trip to China and Reagan's subsequent sellouts and betrayals of the both American industry and American labor.

How GOP Tax Cuts Cause Recessions and have Destroyed the US Economy

NOW --about one percent of the nation owns more than about 90 percent of the entire population combined! No accident, this is by GOP/right wing design:

1. unfair tax cuts which have --in fact --shifted the tax burden to poor and middle class families;
2. well-timed recessions which benefit only the investor class, providing them with opportunities to buy up cheap stocks, depressed real estate, and 'discounted' loans;
3. the Military/Industrial complex which wages war for its living and in the process enriches only the big defense contractors.

GOP policies have made of the US a bloated, impotent, ridiculous empire. What do we export but arms and weapons of mass destruction from whom only an increasingly tiny elite have benefited? Americans abroad are hard pressed to glimpse anything of American manufacture because our top two exports are death and destruction. Even worse, Americans are hard pressed to find the result of American industry in America itself. The aisles of Wal-Mart, for example, are lined with Chinese products. The clothing aisles are filled by sweat shops throughout the so-called 'Third World'. If the US is to rebound, what song will it sing for it supper?

It is easy enough to say that if Obama wishes to succeed, he must figure out how to get money into the hands of 'just folk' who will spend the money in ways that will stimulate production. The question is complicated by the fact, that millions are reduced to shopping at Wal-Mart. Expenditures at Wal-Mart have negative effect on the US economy. Even if, as John Maynard Keynes proposed, the government put dollars in mason jars, buried them in a landfill and let people dig them up, it might not help. Chances are those 'bucks' would, likewise, be spent on foreign goods, stimulating foreign economies --not the failing economy of the US. Most monies spent at Wal-Mart wind up in China where they most certainly will not help the US out of the hole it's in. Wal-Mart, China's distribution wing in the US, is the economic Kudzu that ate America!

Efforts to rehabilitate the US economy are hindered by an apparent obsession with big banks. Here's the bad news:

After all, we’ve just been through the firestorm over the A.I.G. bonuses, during which administration officials claimed that they knew nothing, couldn’t do anything, and anyway it was someone else’s fault. Meanwhile, the administration has failed to quell the public’s doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.

And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they’re doing.

It’s as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street. And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.

--Paul Krugman, Financial Policy Despair

The big banks are to the investor classes what Wal-Mart is to bargain shoppers. They facilitate the transfer of American wealth abroad and that is the very source of America's financial downfall. In the fictional 'Bedford Falls' of the motion picture, 'It's a Wonderful Life', for example, monies deposited in George Bailey's 'Building and Loan' were re-invested in Bedford Falls, creating jobs and purchases in Bedford Falls. I doubt that there exist today any locally owned 'Buildings and Loans'.

I suspect that 'Building and Loans' have gone the way of classic black and white films, 78s, 45s and vinyl LPs. They are but shadows and memories of a simpler but better time in which Americans demonstrated the resolve to rebound and rebuild a nation that still belonged to them, a nation that had not yet been sold out to China. Like American jobs, American monies, jobs, and futures are gone with the wind!

Screw the big banks!

It would help if Americans, the media, and the administration of Barack Obama stopped focusing on the 'big banks'. But not before seizing their assets. Creating a responsible financial institution to replace them is not rocket science. It is a task, rather, that must be undertaken by the Obama administration if it is to succeed. Reagan/Bush rich elites do not drive economies; the imminent collapse of our economy is the proof of it. Governments do not drive economies. Big corporations do not drive economies though many board chairs are deluded into believing themselves to be 'captains of industry'.

More than 83 corporations have offshore subsidiaries where their funds are protected in tax havens in the Caymen islands such as: The Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and even Pepsi and General Motors who received 13.4 billion have hundreds of millions of dollars in tax havens offshore. All these corporations receive protection from paying the US government their taxes and the loss to the US is into the 100 billion dollars of lost tax revenue.

Senator Carl Levin a democrat from Michigan and Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota requested the report to be released and are pushing for new laws prohibiting these bailout scam corporations from being tax dodgers while asking for bailouts from the taxpayer.

The Government Accounting Office includes 63 of the 100 largest contractors who receive government contracts also have accounts in tax haven countries.

--Bailout Corporation Tax Havens in Caymen Islands

The bailouts failed because the wrong people got the money. The culprits are to be found in the 'Axis of GOP Moneterists'.

... in 1963, Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz transformed the debate about the Great Depression. That year saw the publication of their now-classic book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. The Monetary History, the name by which the book is instantly recognized by any macro economist, examined in great detail the relationship between changes in the national money stock--whether determined by conscious policy or by more impersonal forces such as changes in the banking system--and changes in national income and prices.

--Ben S. Bernanke, The Federal Reserve Board, Money, Gold, and the Great Depression

If Obama were a part of the 'revolution', he would have nationalized the crooks and seized their assets in the name of the people.

The trend in which an increasing tiny elite of about one percent of the total population would end up owning more than the rest of us combined is, perhaps, the number one cause of many for the current economic malaise. Millions of Americans cannot afford to make both the mortgage payment and the food bill, let alone plan for educations or retirement! Indeed! Where DID the money go?

The answer is simple and straight-forward: by way of GOP tax breaks for the rich, the money went straight into the coffers of an increasingly tiny elite, a class of oligarchs that now comprises but one percent of the entire population. This transfer of wealth is, in fact, a 'contraction' of the total money supply --the root cause of economic depression.

Of course, the 'elites' do not shop at Wal-Mart! As every decent American has lost faith in the despotic regime inside China, there is almost no one living outside the US who believes in the 'American' ideal. Bush had absolutely ho moral authority from which he could dictate a 'Pax Americana'. Inside the US, our own 'ideals' were disdainfully repudiated by a would-be emperor. The entire world sees this for what it is: a cruel fraud upon the American people and the world.

The average American HAS NOT benefited from US/China 'trade'.

• In 1960, the wealth gap between the top 20 percent and the bottom 20 percent of Americans was thirty fold. Four decades later it’s more than seventy-five-fold.
• Either way -- wealth or income – America is more unequal, economists generally agree, than at any time since the start of the Great Depression…
  
• And more unequal than any other developed nation today.

—Inequality.org

Americans HAVE NOT benefited from the rise of leeches like Wal-Mart. Here’s why:

• Despite bringing in over $378 billion last year, Wal-Mart repeatedly underpays its American workforce. More than 80 wage & hour lawsuits, including a recently certified class action lawsuit in California, are currently pending against the company. Plus, it faces more than 200 discrimination lawsuits for unfair promotion practices, pay discrepancies and other issues, including the nation’s largest workplace gender discrimination lawsuit. By failing to fairly compensate its employees, Wal-Mart cheats states out of income tax revenues.
• Wal-Mart’s low wages means store employees have little or no disposable income to spend to stimulate the economy. Think about what even a small raise for Wal-Mart’s 1 million+ workers would mean nationally, or what it would mean to your city or town if everyone at your local Wal-Mart got a raise.
• Wal-Mart sources the vast majority of its products from countries overseas, meaning most of the cost of a given Wal-Mart product doesn’t go into the U.S. economy. Rather than boosting the U.S. economy, Wal-Mart has played a major role in exporting U.S. manufacturing jobs to countries with low labor and environmental standards. Meanwhile, the company has embraced unions in its Chinese stores and has negotiated with them to raise Chinese salaries. Apparently, what is good enough for China is not good enough here at home.
• Wal-Mart underfunds its health care plan and cuts corners whenever possible, forcing many of its employees to postpone care, thus decreasing their productivity and increasing the eventual cost of their treatment. In desperation, many of them rely on state-sponsored care and drain yet more funds from American communities. That means when Wal-Mart employees end up in emergency rooms, it’s U.S. taxpayers who end up footing the bill. If Wal-Mart were truly interested in stimulating the economy, it would begin to adequately fund its health care plan and take care of its own Associates.
• Wal-Mart routinely dodges state and local taxes, meaning money spent at a Wal-Mart store won’t end up in your community. Wal-Mart actively works to challenge property tax assessments and creates complex real estate arrangements to obscure how much taxes the company owes. When Wal-Mart dodges its tax burden, it takes precious revenues away from cities and states to pay for roads, schools and other services. In turn, individual taxpayers are forced to pay more to make up the difference (which takes more money out of their pockets) or get by with less.

--The Quaker Agitator, Why Wal-Mart Does Not Strengthen Our Economy

Monies spent at Wal-Mart winds up in China! Monies thrown at the ruling elite who don't need a 'bailout' winds up in offshore accounts and the purchase of merchandise not produced in the United States. $billions$ are thus exported to be forever lost to the US economy, a loss no less important than $billions$ that are unfortunately spent at Wal-Mart.

How the War on Iraq Continues to Depress the US Economy

It is naively suggested that the 'defense industry'--the MIC --creates jobs and stimulates the economy. The US is left with a morally moribund economy built up around a handful of robber baron corporations like Halliburton, it's subsidiary KBR and, of course, Murder Inc., otherwise called Blackwater USA. What industries are left to America? Answer: industrialized death and destruction!

If you wish to build an entire economy upon death itself, wars of naked aggression, war crimes and outright murder, then this is definitely the way to go. But it is not a recipe upon which a viable, growing economy is based. There is a choice to be made between 'gun's and 'butter'.

The GOP administration of George W. Bush and Darth Cheney learned much from the Nazi collaboration with I.G. Farben, Thyssen, Krupp and America's own Henry Ford, an idiot whose portrait 'graced' Adolph Hitler's office. Indeed! There was money to be made in appalling acts of state sponsored genocide. Money was made by this ilk in Iraq. But it's not the kind of businesses I want to get juicy contracts that are paid by my tax monies. It is not a sustainable economy; it is rather a Faustian bargain in which riches result in the short term but financial collapse and living hells in the longer term.

Like Rome, the US has become a bloated, inefficient empire which produces very little of lasting value. Indeed, the biggest US exports, like those of Rome earlier, are death and destruction via the war business.

The cost of Bush's war on Iraq has surpassed one trillion dollars but there is no evidence of it benefiting the US economy. It is time to drive a stake through the heart of the malicious lie that wars are good for the economy. Only the Military/Industrial complex benefits from war but what is good for the MIC is has been harmful, perhaps, fatal for the country.

The MIC is a drag on the economy, an economic black hole into which is drained the economic and creative resources of the nation. War itself is a Faustian bargain. The hour of midnight is approaching.

The economic benefits of building a tank are temporary. Once built, the tank is a drag, requiring more to upkeep than war booty can justify. It returns absolutely nothing for the investment. In the end, only the military contractors building the tank or maintaining it have benefited and they will have done so at taxpayer (your) expense. On a larger scale, the Pentagon is an economic black hole, having sucked the life blood from the US economy. It should not be surprising, then, that the Pentagon is more akin to organized crime than legitimate enterprise. The 'Pentagon' is a 'gang'.

One of the most pernicious economic myths is the idea that war helps the economy. In reality, war is destructive and it always results in economic retrogression and misery.

The US economy didn’t really recover until 1946, when the immediate postwar period witnessed the dismantling of the command economy in favor of a much more liberalized market economy. Peace brought military demobilization, deregulation, and perhaps most importantly, a seventy-five percent reduction in government spending. This was a genuine peace dividend and it set the stage for America’s legendary post-war economic boom.

--War and Economic Decline

The idea that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy is sold and promoted. In fact, new studies now confirm what I have always believed and what Gore Vidal had stated in his classic: The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has blamed the Iraq war for sending the United States into a recession. On Wednesday, he told a London think tank that the war caused the credit crunch and the housing crisis that are propelling the current economic downturn. Testifying before the Senate's Joint Economic Committee the following day, he said our involvement in Iraq has long been "weakening the American economy" and "a day of reckoning" has finally arrived.

--Is the Economy a Casualty of War?

Now --war critics have the economic data and models proving that military spending 'diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment.' This thesis is likewise confirmed in a paper by Thomas E. Woods at: http://www.mises.org/journals/scholar/woods2.pdf

The obvious lies about the war have been exposed. Not enough attention has been focused on the one of the biggest con jobs of them all ---right up there with WMD.

White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey was the exception to the rule, offering an "upper bound" estimate of $100 billion to $200 billion in a September 2002 interview with The Wall Street Journal. That figure raised eyebrows at the time, although Lindsey argued the cost was small, adding, "The successful prosecution of the war would be good for the economy.”

--Cost of Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion

The US has been in a state of near perpetual war since the so-called Spanish-American war made of this nation an empire. But it was, specifically, according to Gore Vidal in The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, the moment at which the US became a net debtor nation that the US empire ceased to be an 'empire'. Americans are led to believe that the US can simply 'war' its way out of economic disaster. In fact, the US has been fighting wars with monies it doesn't have. The Iraq war may finish us off.

For Immediate Release: May 1, 2007

Contact: Lynn Erskine, 202-293-5380 x115

Washington, DC: The Center for Economic and Policy Research released a report today estimating the economic impact of increased US military spending comparable to the spending on the Iraq war. The report, presenting the results of a simulation from the economic forecasting company Global Insight, shows the increased level of military spending leads to fewer jobs and slower economic growth.

For the report, The Economic Impact of the Iraq War and Higher Military Spending, by economist Dean Baker, CEPR commissioned Global Insight to run a simulation with its macmacroeconomic del. Global Insight's model was selected for this analysis because it is a commonly used and widely respected model. It estimated the impact of an increase in annual US military spending equal to 1 percent of GDP (approximately equal to the military spending increase compared with pre-September 11th baseline).

The projections show the following:

-- After an initial demand stimulus, the effect of increased military spending turns negative around the sixth year. After 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in the baseline scenario with lower defense spending.

-- Inflation and interest rates are considerably higher. After 5 years, the interest rate on 10-Year Treasury notes is projected to be 0.7 percentage points higher than in the baseline scenario. After 10 years, the gap would rise to 0.9 percentage points.

-- Higher interest rates lead to reduced demand in the interest-sensitive sectors of the economy. After 5 years, annual car and truck sales are projected to go down by 192,200 in the high military spending scenario. After 10 years, the drop is projected to be 323,300 and after 20 years annual sales are projected to be down 731,400.

-- Construction and manufacturing are the sectors that are projected to experience the largest shares of the job loss.

"It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy," said Baker. "In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."

The report recommends that Congress request the Congressional Budget Office produce its own projections of the economic impact of a sustained increase in defense spending. If wars are disastrous for the economy, then why does government insist upon fighting them when clearly 'national security' is simply not at risk?

--Report Shows Increased US Military Spending Slows Economy

The bottom line is that everything the GOP has told us about the economy is untrue, most certainly lies of the worst sort. This party has overtly courted a 'base' of just one percent of the total population. This 'base' of just one percent has been enriched beyond the ability of words to describe [See: L-Curve]. This was the deliberate and considered policy of the GOP leadership. To accomplish their goals, George Bush was 'selected' to lead this nation into an economically ruinous war of naked aggression in violation of federal law and international conventions. This act alone is punishable by death and these charges should be returned in federal indictments against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (who, we have learned supervised a squad a professional murderers) and every other Republican of rank, responsibility and crucial decision making powers with respect to this panoply of heinous crimes not seen since the rise of the Third Reich!

Addenda:

[John Maynard] Keynes seemed to be the right man for the time as he was reflecting the increasingly common view that blamed the capitalists themselves for the situation. In the General Theory Keynes rejected the view that the boom-bust cycle was due to over-expansive government monetary policy and that the stubbornness of the Depression was due to government interference with market mechanisms. He labeled all economists who believed such views as “classical”—in other words, hopelessly out of touch with reality. Instead, Keynes proposed a “general theory” that he thought capable of explaining not only the good times but also the bad.

According to Keynes, what drives the economy is aggregate demand or aggregate expenditures. Aggregate demand can be broken down into three main components: personal consumption (C), private investment (I), and government expenditures (G). The relationship can be summed up with this formula: AD = C + I + G. If Aggregate Demand is strong, the economy will be strong. However, if Aggregate Demand falters, businesses will end up with large unsold inventories and will cut back on production to avoid surpluses in the future. As they cut back they will of course need fewer inputs—including labor—and high unemployment will result.

The culprit in this story, the element that throws the entire system out of whack, is private investment. Private investment consists of business expenditures on machines, buildings, factories, and so on. In other words, investment is capital formation. Keynes claimed that private investment is inherently unstable due to what he called the “animal spirits” of businessmen/capitalists. He believed that businessmen are ultimately irrational and prone to herd-like behavior. Like sheep that blindly follow other sheep in the herd, it is easy for businessmen to become “irrationally exuberant”—as well as irrationally lethargic. Investment lethargy would trigger a large decrease in private investment, thus decreasing aggregate expenditures and triggering an economic downturn.

--Ivan Pongracic, Jr, The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman

Following are just some of the 'accomplishments' of the GOP as they come to me. With any effort at all, you will find hundreds more. The following I dashed 'off the top of my head".

1. Total and humiliating defeat for the US in Iraq
2. The utter collapse of the US economy
3. The export of American jobs to China and anywhere BUT the US.
4. Selling out the American consumer to Wal- Mart; most Americans no longer earn enough to shop anywhere else. Wal-Mart depresses local economies, has forced employees to work 'off the clock', in other words, 'work for free'. Wal-Mart has destroyed the 'downtown' areas of small towns. You can still see them. But only in Norman Rockwell prints.
   
5. Dividing the US into those who have and those who have not where those who have not make up over 90 percent of the population and those have are but a about one percent and own MORE than 90 percent combined.
6. The dumbing down of America with 'faith-based' initiatives'; what had been needed was fact-based initiatives that encouraged intelligence --rather than gullibility and the belief in economic voodoo. Like 'trickle down theory' and other GOP 'economic voodoo', 'faith-based initiatives' was a callous fraud exemplified by the "Houston Miracle" often attributed to Bush protoge Rod Paige. It was a fraud. The test scores were phony baloney. Like Enron, they cooked the books.
7. The destruction of New Orleans because black folk dared to live there. Recently it has been learned that residents of the white suburb of Algiers Point murdered black residents trying to escape rising flood waters in New Orleans. As New Orleans tried to recover, Bush infamously said: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"
8. The subversion of American jurisprudence by packing SCOTUS with ideologues and idiots who clearly thought that it was their job to re-write the Constitution --not apply it. Clue: Antonin Scallia cannot carry James Madison's shit! Scalia had all but admitted his bias even before the debacle in Florida was taken to the high court. Scalia himself admitted that his aim was to prevent Bush from falling behind in the recount. He would try to undo the laws of common-sense and logic to do it: "Count first and rule upon the legality afterward is not a recipe for producing election results that have the public acceptance that democratic stability requires!" Excuse me, Antonin! The guy getting the fewer number of votes is supposed to lose! Fact is, Antonin never had a stupid idea that he could not intellectualize with big words and bullshit!
   But --as Scallia himself opined: "I'm too smart for this court!" Of late, that may be true. And that is enough to give one night terrors.
9. The destruction of the US environment.
10. Presiding over US descent into third world, possibly fourth world status.
11. Turning American cities into sprawling out-of-control carbuncles the purpose of which was to inspire car sales and increased oil consumption. This is especially stupid as 'car making' was essemtially 'outsourced' to Japanese plants paying MUCH LOWER wages inside the US. Toyota was allowed to build cars in the US and pay much less than autoworkers would have made in Detroit. Workers who make less money, spend less mony --unless they are extended credit. Credit seems like FREE MONEY! Until the bill comes due!
12. Gerrymandering congressional districts such that the GOP might get majorities in both houses of Congress.
13. Openly deriding the Constitution --as George W. Bush did numerous times in various ways.
14. Encouraging stupidity, rewarding incompetence, elevating ideology above intelligence.
15. Turning American cities into ugly carbuncles in which robber baron corporations brainwash a captive audience in Potemkin villages called 'suburbs' or --worse --'planned communities' which come with an implicit guarantee that you will not see a 'negro'.
16. Becoming a blood-sucking parasite that killed its host.

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What Happens When Your Paycheck Comes from China

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

In the 1930s, millions of Americans lost hope of getting a paycheck. Utterly disillusioned, Americans might have embraced full blown socialism. Now Americans may have no choice but to accede to the ownership of their country by China. Has there been another instance in history in which one nation has foreclosed upon another? Americans have two options: utter collapse or become slaves to your new Chinese landlords!

As the US emerged from the Great Depression, the 'right wing' was spooked as it often is and should be. The FBI considered 'It's a Wonderful Life' to be a subversive film because it "deliberately maligned the upper class" and demonstrated that "people who had money were mean and despicable characters". Aren't they?

Indeed, 'It's a Wonderful Life' was a subversive film. It threatened to subvert the lies and claptrap that is sold us by the Axis of Wall Street, K-Street and the GOP. 'It's a Wonderful Life' threatened to reveal the consequences of lies and perhaps worse the implications of truth about an entrenched establishment that is premised upon a pack of lies and propaganda. In the words of Albert Speer who should have known, the Third Reich was literally built upon 'meaningless platitudes'. The same is true of the US government, especially the fraudulent reigns of Ronald Reagan about which the right wing still lies. The truth about Reagan threatens the self-esteem of every stupid GOPPER and/or right wing knee-jerk who supported him and the Bush crime family.

A rational discussion of the Great Depression is still feared by the right wing because it will expose to the world the economic sand upon which is built their house of cards. The right wing and its willing culprits fear the implications of truth but cannot escape the consequences of their many lies.

The bad news in today’s jobs report is pervasive.

• Private and government payrolls combined have shrunk for 14 straight months, and net job losses since the start of the recession total 4.4 million. (Private sector payrolls have shrunk by 4.6 million jobs over the same period.)
  
• Job losses have averaged almost 650,000 a month over the last four months.
• The official unemployment rate, which was 4.9 percent at the start of the recession in December 2007, reached 8.1 percent last month.
• Other indicators show the breadth of labor market weakness. For example, the percentage of the population with a job (60.3 percent) has fallen to its lowest level since early 1986.
• The Labor Department’s most comprehensive alternative unemployment rate measure — which includes people who want to work but are discouraged from looking and people working part time because they can’t find full-time jobs — stood at 14.8 percent in February, up 6.1 percentage points since the recession began and the highest level on record in data that go back to 1994.
Well over one-fifth (23.1 percent) of the 12.5 million unemployed have not been able to find a job despite looking for 27 weeks or more. (Regular unemployment insurance benefits typically run out after 26 weeks.)

For the recovery law to stem the tide of job losses and lay the groundwork for a strong recovery as quickly and effectively as possible, federal, state, and local governments have to get programs up and running quickly. In particular, states must use the money that Congress provided to them as intended so that it will have maximum effectiveness as stimulus.

--CBPP Economic Recovery Watch: Statement on February Employment Report

Right wing cheerleaders for 'laissez-faire' economics must be chagrined by recent 'Marxist' bailouts of so-called 'free enterprise'. As economists conduct post-mortems on the ongoing crash and dive, economists read the 'bones' left in the wake of the earlier 'crisis', the stock market crash of 1929.

However, in 1963, Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz transformed the debate about the Great Depression. That year saw the publication of their now-classic book, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. The Monetary History, the name by which the book is instantly recognized by any macro economist, examined in great detail the relationship between changes in the national money stock--whether determined by conscious policy or by more impersonal forces such as changes in the banking system--and changes in national income and prices.

--Ben S. Bernanke, The Federal Reserve Board, Money, Gold, and the Great Depression

What Bernanke fails to mention is that Friedman --despite his great reputation as a 'conservative' economist --leaned heavily upon the work of John Maynard Keynes in his analysis of the Great Depression. But, on the whole, he most certainly got it wrong.

[John Maynard] Keynes seemed to be the right man for the time as he was reflecting the increasingly common view that blamed the capitalists themselves for the situation. In the General Theory Keynes rejected the view that the boom-bust cycle was due to over-expansive government monetary policy and that the stubbornness of the Depression was due to government interference with market mechanisms. He labeled all economists who believed such views as “classical”—in other words, hopelessly out of touch with reality. Instead, Keynes proposed a “general theory” that he thought capable of explaining not only the good times but also the bad.

According to Keynes, what drives the economy is aggregate demand or aggregate expenditures. Aggregate demand can be broken down into three main components: personal consumption (C), private investment (I), and government expenditures (G). The relationship can be summed up with this formula: AD = C + I + G. If Aggregate Demand is strong, the economy will be strong. However, if Aggregate Demand falters, businesses will end up with large unsold inventories and will cut back on production to avoid surpluses in the future. As they cut back they will of course need fewer inputs—including labor—and high unemployment will result.

The culprit in this story, the element that throws the entire system out of whack, is private investment. Private investment consists of business expenditures on machines, buildings, factories, and so on. In other words, investment is capital formation. Keynes claimed that private investment is inherently unstable due to what he called the “animal spirits” of businessmen/capitalists. He believed that businessmen are ultimately irrational and prone to herd-like behavior. Like sheep that blindly follow other sheep in the herd, it is easy for businessmen to become “irrationally exuberant”—as well as irrationally lethargic. Investment lethargy would trigger a large decrease in private investment, thus decreasing aggregate expenditures and triggering an economic downturn.

--Ivan Pongracic, Jr, The Great Depression According to Milton Friedman

In the motion picture 'It's a Wonderful Life', George Baily represents the 'private investment' part of the Keynes' equation. Had he jumped off the bridge, the picture of Bedford Falls as "Pottersville" might have come true. This is a picture of wealth benefiting the community. Potter, by contrast, represents the Axis of Wall Street/K-Street/GOP. This is wealth 'trickling up' by way of Reaganesque tax cuts that benefit only the ruling elite. Contrary to the lies with which this scheme is sold, this is wealth that finds its way to 'offshore' tax havens where it does not and cannot benefit the people of the United States by way of jobs or opportunities.

Here's how the model works. Unfair tax cuts are a windfall to rich elites. Despite the sales pitch, this 'windfall' is not re-invested in ways that will create new jobs or higher wages. The 'windfall' is instead invested offshore, in tax havens where it is forever lost to US consumers who might have used it to invest in better housing or in goods that are still manufactured in the US. Even if the consumer should decide to 'save' his windfall, the chances are good that his domestic 'bank' will sell his 'paper' to a larger institution and eventually offshore. Briefly, tax cuts benefiting only the nation's increasingly tiny elite are forever lost to domestic investment or domestic spending. These are dollars that are effectively removed from the economy. This is, in fact, a mechanism by which the supply of money contracts. Another word for it is 'depression'. All the official records, charts and data analyses prove that following every GOP tax cut is a recession/depression. Now you know why!

More than 83 corporations have offshore subsidiaries where their funds are protected in tax havens in the Caymen islands such as: The Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and even Pepsi and General Motors who received 13.4 billion have hundreds of millions of dollars in tax havens offshore. All these corporations receive protection from paying the US government their taxes and the loss to the US is into the 100 billion dollars of lost tax revenue.

Senator Carl Levin a democrat from Michigan and Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota requested the report to be released and are pushing for new laws prohibiting these bailout scam corporations from being tax dodgers while asking for bailouts from the taxpayer.

The Government Accounting Office includes 63 of the 100 largest contractors who receive government contracts also have accounts in tax haven countries.

--Bailout Corporation Tax Havens in Caymen Islands

I see a Pottersville whenever I see Wal-Mart put the locals out of business. It required an intervening angel to save Bedford Falls from its fate at the hands of a greedy banker. Like John Maynard Keynes, we wonder: who will save "capitalism from itself”? Where is our guardian angel?

Her aim was to convince China to keep investing its foreign exchange reserves in US treasury securities in order to help finance the bailout of failing US banks and pay for the $787 billion US stimulus package. The US treasury has indicated it must raise nearly $500 billion in the first quarter of this year alone.

In an interview on China's Dragon TV just before concluding her trip and returning to Washington Sunday, Clinton warned that if the US economy collapsed China would pay a steep price as well. "It would not be in China's interest if we were unable to get our economy moving," she told her interviewer.

"Our economies are so intertwined," she said on the talk show. "The Chinese know that in order to start exporting again to its biggest market ... the United States has to take some drastic measures with the stimulus package. We have to incur more debt."

Clinton added, "We are truly going to rise or fall together. By continuing to support American treasury instruments, the Chinese are recognizing our interconnection."

--Hillary Clinton presses China to keep buying US debt

It would appear then that America's only hope in the short term is that it continue to export American jobs and industries as it has done since Richard Nixon and the Bushes sold us all out to China. If what Hilary says is true, then --once again --the American labor movement will have to suck up the many harms that were in fact perped by the crooks on Wall Street, K-Street and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It would appear that once again the weight of the US economy must be borne by the class of productive Americans who have been screwed silly by the Republican party and their legions of paid liars. If Hilary is correct, then In the longer term, we will have been owned lock, stock and barrel by China, the FOX Broadcasting/Wal-Mart of countries, the country that willingly made a Faustian pact with the Axis of Nixon/Bush/Bush. I simply must ask you: how do you feel about slaving away your life for waqes that will ultimately come from the nation that annexed Tibet, a nation in which there is most certainly no pictograph for 'human rights'?

While there are many analogies to be made with the Great Depression of 1929, the lessons themselves have obviously been missed. The right wing, for example, will never admit that their policies were simply dead wrong and incompetent. The Democrats will never admit that they might have effectively opposed the GOPs Four Horsemen of Economic Apocalypse. While even Nixon famously said 'We are all Keynesians now', the lessons of Keynes may never have been heeded and less so since the US entered into its faustian bargain with our new landlords --China.

It seems an extraordinary imbecility that this wonderful outburst of productive energy [over 1924-1929] should be the prelude to impoverishment and depression. Some austere and puritanical souls regard it both as an inevitable and a desirable nemesis on so much over expansion, as they call it; a nemesis on man's speculative spirit. It would, they feel, be a victory for the mammon of unrighteousness if so much prosperity was not subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy. We need, they say, what they politely call a 'prolonged liquidation' to put us right. The liquidation, they tell us, is not yet complete. But in time it will be. And when sufficient time has elapsed for the completion of the liquidation, all will be well with us again.

I do not take this view. I find the explanation of the current business losses, of the reduction in output, and of the unemployment which necessarily ensues on this not in the high level of investment which was proceeding up to the spring of 1929, but in the subsequent cessation of this investment. I see no hope of a recovery except in a revival of the high level of investment. And I do not understand how universal bankruptcy can do any good or bring us nearer to prosperity... [p. 349].

While some part of the investment which was going on in the world at large was doubtless ill judged and unfruitful, there can, I think, be no doubt that the world was enormously enriched by the constructions of the quinquennium from 1925 to 1929; its wealth increased in these five years by as much as in any other ten or twenty years of its history... [p. 347].

Doubtless, as was inevitable in a period of such rapid changes, the rate of growth of some individual commodities [over 1924-1929] could not always be in just the appropriate relation to that of others. But, on the whole, I see few signs of any serious want of balance such as is alleged by some authorities. The rates of growth [of different sectors] seem to me, looking back, to have been in as good a balance as one could have expected them to be. A few more quinquennia of equal activity might, indeed, have brought us near to the economic Eldorado where all our reasonable economic needs would be satisfied... [pp. 347-48].>

--John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory and After: Part I, Preparation; Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 13, pt. 1, Donald Moggridge, ed., (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press).

There is in America, then, a ruling class that willingly and knowingly lies to you not because they don't know the truth but because they do. This 'class' will never face up to the truth about tax cuts from which they alone benefited. This 'class' will forever blame others for a collapse that is well under way. This class denies the implications of the truth and in vain tries to avoid the consequences of their lies.

It's a Wonderful Life

A hat-tip to Crooks and Liars for the following vid and comment:

Rush Limbaugh Get his Sorry, Stupid, Arrogant Ass Kicked!!!

I found this clip this morning and thought I'd share it here at C&L. The clip is from 1990 when a much younger Rush Limbaugh got owned by the studio audience during his very brief career in television. The crowd eventually becomes so incensed by his nasty attacks on women that he can't get a word in edgewise and they are forced to clear the studio in order for Rush to actually finish the segment.

Rush has challenged President Obama to a debate, but only because he knows there isn't a hope in hell it will ever happen. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance, but that's not going to stop him from rallying his ignorant minions. He cares nothing for his party, this nation or its people, he's out for power,money and fame -- much like the party he now leads.

--Flashback: Limbaugh Gets Pwned By Studio Audience

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Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership, Global Issues, Updated: January 02, 2009

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