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A First Look at a New Report on Crony Capitalism – Trillions in Corporate Welfare | A Lightning War for Liberty
One of the primary topics on this website since it was launched has been the extremely destructive and explosive rise of crony capitalism throughout the USA. It is crony capitalism, as opposed to free markets, that has led to the gross inequality in American society we have today. Cronyism for the super wealthy starts at the very top with the Federal Reserve System, which consists of topdown economic central planners who manipulate the money supply and hence interest rates for the benefit of the financial oligarch class. It then trickles down through lobbyist money into the halls of Washington D.C., and ultimately filters down to local governments and then the average person on the street gaming welfare or disability.
As such, we now live in a culture of corruption and theft that is pervasive throughout society. One thing that bothers me to no end is when fake Republicans focus their criticism on struggling people who need welfare or food stamps to survive. They have this absurd notion that the whole welfare system doesn’t start with the multinational corporations and Central Banks at the top. In reality, it is at the top where the cancer starts, and that’s where we should focus in order to achieve real change.
That’s where a new report from Open the Books on corporate welfare comes in. In a preview of the publication, the organization notes:
If Republicans are going to get truly serious about cutting government spending, they are going to have to snip the umbilical cord from the Treasury to corporate America. You can’t reform welfare programs for the poor until you’ve gotten Daddy Warbucks off the dole. Voters will insist on that — as well they should.
So why hasn’t it happened? Why hasn’t the GOP pledged to end corporate welfare as we know it?
Part of the explanation is that too many have gotten confused about the difference between free-market capitalism and crony capitalism.
And part of the problem is corporate welfare that is so well hidden from public view in the budget that no one has really measured how big this mountain of giveaway cash to the Fortune 500 really is. Finding out is like trying to break into the CIA.
Until now. Open the Books, an Illinois-based watchdog group, has been scrupulously monitoring all federal grants, loans, direct payments and insurance subsidies flowing to individuals and companies.
It’s an attempt to force federal agencies to release information on where the $4 trillion budget is really spent — and Open the Books will release a new report on corporate welfare payments to the Fortune 100 companies from 2000 to 2012.
Over that period, the 100 received $1.2 trillion in payments from the federal government.
That number does not include the hundreds of billions of dollars in housing, bank and auto company bailouts in 2008 and 2009, because those payments and where they went are kept mostly invisible in the federal agency books.
As suspected, the biggest welfare queens in the U.S. are the super wealthy themselves, but they’d rather you focus on some single mother on welfare simply trying to survive.
The full report can be downloaded here.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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The Animal Spirits Page: How monetary policy drives foreign policy
The Animal Spirits Page: How monetary policy drives foreign policy.
It should now be evident that America’s foreign policy is to an extent being driven by our banking mess. Again and again, we see Washington, including Wall Street’s handmaiden, the Fed, exporting monetary chaos implicitely in order to weaken the status of potentially competing reserve currencies:
- Wall Street sent a tsunami of bad AAA-rated mortgage debt to Europe, much to Germany, the locus of power for the Euro (and again, implicit admission of guilt is seen in the apparent fronting of billions of bailout dollars to the European banks by the Fed after the crisis);
- Washington has apparently fomented or supported a coup in the Ukraine that increases the likelihood of war in Europe dramatically therefore sending the gigantic pools of liquid financial assets in the world scurrying into the greenback and US Treasuries, which the Chinese have stopped gobbling up;
- the other factor is that the military-industrial complex needs war to get its funding, and when drone-bombing rag-heads can’t provoke a serious attack, destabilizing a former Eastern bloc nation and provoking a somewhat justifiably paranoid Russian leader into military action guarantees at least a shot in the arm of crisis funding.
Russia has repeatedly stated over the past decades that an EU move on the Ukraine crosses a red line. The EU ignored the warning, and with the US’s help and the ire of Ukrainians sick of a corrupt government crossed Putin’s red line. What the Ukrainians want is democracy and relief from their corrupt plutocrats (see previous post’s article by Paul Craig Roberts).
The US has no compelling strategic interest in the Ukraine, or in the Crimea remaining part of the Ukraine. Yes, the Ukraine has been looted by its oligarchs, just as Russia was, and just as the US is being looted by its oligarchs right now; incomes of a majority of American households are falling so the banks can collect on bad debts. It would be nice for people everywhere if they could break the grip of the plutocrats over their livelihoods. In the Ukraine, to substitute debt servitude to Western banks for the domination of the oligarchs would only accelerate the collapse of the EU. And it’s not clear the EU, if it offers help, won’t be ripped off by the oligarchs as well. The new government in the Ukraine has already increased the power of the oligarchs by giving them provinces to rule, so it’s not clear the Western “rescuers” are even able to help solve the fundamental problem at all, and might end up losing their shirts again, as they have in Greece, Portugal, et al.
Until democratic governments around the world become strong enough to counteract the power of the plutocratsby taxing them, both their income and their wealth (as Sweden does) the revolving looting of sovereign governments and demolition of middle classes by the plutocrats and their corporations will continue.
A couple of posts ago I said the scariest thing I’ve heard recently was Catherine Anne Fitts saying what the world needs now is a global debt for equity swap. I should say I generally like Ms. Fitts’ analysis and suspect she may even have misspoken when she made this comment. Such a move would concentrate ownership of the world’s assets sufficiently to create even more of a Plantation Earth than we have currently.
She identified the problem, but not the solution. What the world needs now is a global jubilee, debt forgiveness. The debt that the Fed is shoving under the carpet via QE is what is known in banking circles as “bad debt.” It is loans that never should have been made because they will never be repaid. In honest not crony capitalism such debts come out of the profits (as losses) of the banks that made them. In crony capitalism, with a central bank controlled by the banks, such debts are “paid back” by being monetized and put on the backs of the taxpayers either directly or through inflation.
The austerity programs Europe has put in place so that Wall Street and European banks can be paid back bad debts have destroyed more than one economy and more are probably yet to fall. (The idea promoted ten plus years ago of “convergence” of interest rates in the EU between periphery and core caused me to gag at the time.) Debt slavery to Western banks is not the answer. (China is apparently making similar mistakes; it will be interesting to see what they do with the bad debt. I suspect their strong central government will tell the bankers to go stuff it.) Ms. Fitts suggests that sooner or later the plutocrats will destroy the banks in order to buy them cheap and collect the rents themselves, canny suggestion indeed.
Chaos in the world = a strong dollar. Until it doesn’t. Chaos has a way of being unpredictable.
Capitalism has killed democracy. “Free” markets dominated by monopolies and oligopolies are not what Adam Smith had in mind. It’s time for democracy to be reborn. There are degrees of economic inequality that are simply immoral and destructive and humankind has the right to reject them. When the top 85 families own as much as the bottom 3.5 billion people, as recently reported, we have reached such a point.
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Jesse’s Café Américain: Third World America – The Big Fix: The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Coverup
Jesse’s Café Américain: Third World America – The Big Fix: The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Coverup.
Is anything really different, or have we just been prompted to move on and think about something else? Will the US be better prepared to deal with the next financial or environmental crisis?
Are portions of the US any different from other third world countries that are sacked of their resources, their people impoverished, their quality of life ruined, and their children left with little or no hope for the future?
Hope and change.
Related:
BP Get Slick In Trying to Undermine Gulf Oil Spill Settlement
Fish Suffering Heart Failure and Decreased Numbers Due to BP Oil Spill
BP Oil Spill Causes Heart Damage Killing Tuna
Gulf War Syndrome Comes to the Gulf of Mexico?
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Jesse's Café Américain: Third World America – The Big Fix: The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Coverup
Jesse’s Café Américain: Third World America – The Big Fix: The Gulf Of Mexico Oil Spill Coverup.
Is anything really different, or have we just been prompted to move on and think about something else? Will the US be better prepared to deal with the next financial or environmental crisis?
Are portions of the US any different from other third world countries that are sacked of their resources, their people impoverished, their quality of life ruined, and their children left with little or no hope for the future?
Hope and change.
Related:
BP Get Slick In Trying to Undermine Gulf Oil Spill Settlement
Fish Suffering Heart Failure and Decreased Numbers Due to BP Oil Spill
BP Oil Spill Causes Heart Damage Killing Tuna
Gulf War Syndrome Comes to the Gulf of Mexico?
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charles hugh smith-Theft Is Deflationary–Especially the Crony-Capitalist/State Kind
charles hugh smith-Theft Is Deflationary–Especially the Crony-Capitalist/State Kind.
Monopoly power in all its forms–in our system, crony capitalism and its partner, the neofeudal state–enables theft on a systemic scale.
If a monopoly forces its customers to pay more for low-quality goods and services because they have no choice, how is that not theft?
If the Mafia raises the price of “protection” on small businesses (another case of monopoly and no other choice), how is that extortion not theft?
When a local government raises junk fees to fund its cronies’ excessive (i.e. non-market-rate) salaries and pensions, how is that monopoly power to extort more money from those with no other choice any different from Mafia extortion/theft?
If a pharmaceutical company extends a patent on a costly medication by changing the dosage slightly, how is that not theft via regulatory capture? If a government contractor charges the Pentagon $1,000 for a hammer (all those overhead charges, tsk-tsk–lobbying corrupt politicos costs a lot, you know), how is that not theft of taxpayers’ money?
When the Federal Reserve drops the yield on savings to near-zero to funnel all that stolen wealth to its cronies on Wall Street, how is that not theft?
Monopoly power in all its forms–in our system, crony capitalism and its partner, the neofeudal state–enables theft on a systemic scale. When crony capitalism and the state are essentially one system, the propaganda organs of the state and mainstream corporate media combine to persuade the stripmined populace that their theft is not theft, it’s “capitalism and democracy at work.” This is known as The Big Lie. What we have is systemic theft, predation and exploitation.
Calling things what they really are would upset the apple cart of systemic exploitation.Let’s Call Things What They Really Are in 2014 (January 15, 2014)
Correspondent Jeff W. explains that all this systemic theft is inherently deflationary:
All forms of stealing are deflationary. Stealing cuts into the average citizen’s disposable income, it reduces how much he can buy. Because there are now fewer dollars chasing more goods, deflation is the inevitable result. Stealing is actually worse than a zero-sum game. Society loses more than the thief takes. In addition to losses from theft, a victim often has to spend more on security measures. Theft also has a chilling effect on capital investment and commerce in general.Consider how many different kinds of theft the American citizen is exposed to: street crime, sickcare industry ripoffs, legal system ripoffs including huge fines for traffic violations, high taxes, interest earnings on his savings that amount to ZIRP, a corporatist state determined to suppress his wages by any means necessary, unending victimization at the hands of predators enabled and protected by the state. If he owns a small business, he has to deal with a corrupt regulatory state, higher taxes, and an enlarged menagerie of predators. Today there are thieves everywhere.
So one big deflation trend is theft. As theft increases, deflation increases. As society collapses and thieves start roaming freely all over the landscape, a deflationary collapse can be expected—absent a determined and persistent campaign of money printing.
Exhibit A for the case that stealing is deflationary is the Dark Ages.Stealing was rampant in the Dark Ages. How did people react to that? By “going medieval.” They wore clothing that made them look poor so as to avoid attracting the attention of thieves. Their dwellings looked poor for the same reason. If they had cash, they would bury it in the ground; no one could be trusted. Unless one was an insider who could get protection from the state, no one’s property was safe.
Capital investments were much too risky, and out of the question. What were the price characteristics of the Dark Ages? Wages were low. Real estate valuations low. Prices of manufactured items (such as they were) were low. Only food was expensive. People can cut back on clothing and shelter, but there is a limit to how much they can cut back on food. In the Dark Ages, people really hunkered down and just focused on basic survival.
Exhibit B is Detroit. Detroit for many years has been a high crime area, i.e. it had lots of thieves running around. What are the price characteristics of Detroit? Wages low. Real estate valuations low. There is very little manufacturing being done inside the city limits today because of high property taxes and crime. There is also very little capital investment for the same reasons.
There is a vicious circle at work here. 1) Thieves control the government; 2) Which results in increased stealing; 3) Deflation results from that; 4) Which gives the thieves a reason to print money and give it to themselves; 5) Which enriches the thieves some more; 6) Which gives them more resources they can use to consolidate their control of the government; 7) Back to step 1.
Many people seem confused about how there could be deflation in the paper (or digital) money era. If they would recognize how much stealing is going on, and if they understood the powerful deflationary effect of stealing, then perhaps they would not be so surprised to observe price decreases, particularly in wages and the prices of manufactured products.
Thank you, Jeff, for explaining the causal connection between systemic theft and deflation. To all those terrified of deflation (for example, central bankers and their cronies holding trillions of dollars in phantom assets and illusory collateral), the solution is obvious: get rid of systemic theft. But since those terrified of deflation are at the top of the monopoly-power thievery pyramid, that is asking the impossible: for the thieves to relinquish their power to steal.
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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Two Powder Kegs Ready to Blow: China & India
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Two Powder Kegs Ready to Blow: China & India.
China and India are both powder kegs awaiting a spark for the same reason: systemic corruption.
The conventional view of China and India sports not one but two pair of rose-colored glasses: Chindia (even the portmanteau word is chirpy) is the world’s engine of growth, and this rapid economic growth is chipping away at structural political and social problems.
Nice, especially from a distance. But on the ground, China and India (not Chindia–there is no such entity) are both powder kegs awaiting a spark for the same reason: systemic corruption in every nook and cranny of both nations. The conventional rose-colored view is that corruption will inevitably decline with modernization and economic growth.
This is simply wrong on multiple levels: as the opportunities for crony/neofeudal skimming increase, so does corruption. As the scale of the economy increases, so does the scale of corruption.
China’s “princelings” (offspring and family of the inner political circle and top apparatchiks of the Communist Party) are billionaires, not mere millionaires. A recent expose of offshore accounts held by various Chinese billionaires estimated the wealth skimmed and transferred our of China at between $1 trillion and $4 trillion: China’s Epic Offshore Wealth Revealed: How Chinese Oligarchs Quietly Parked Up To $4 Trillion In The Caribbean.
Even the top number is a gross underestimate, as $4 trillion only accounts for the skim of the top layer; beneath that 1/10th of 1% is the rest of the top 1%, tens of thousands of lower-level political functionaries who skimmed billions of dollars forcing peasants off their land and selling development rights to crony developers–to name but one common skim of many.
A more realistic estimate might be $6 trillion–half of China’s gross domestic product (GDP). Consider the ramifications of the many models of systemic corruption at the top: How a PLA General Built a Web of Corruption to Amass a Fortune.
I know from confidential on-the-ground sources that a significant percentage of the entire top political layer of 3rd, 4th and 5th tier cities have left China for well-padded nests in the West: Australia and Canada are popular choices, as the right to immigrate can be purchased–just bring in the requisite sum of cash looted from peasants. (The U.S. also grants special immigration status to those bringing in major capital and declaring their intent to hire Americans: easy enough with looted millions.)
(Sidebar on how even the lowly functionary skimmer can get huge sums out of China: take a “vacation” to Macau. Buy $1 million in casino chips with your looted yuan. Lose $50,000 at the tables and then go cash in your remaining chips in U.S. dollars. Deposit the dollars in a Hong Kong or other Asian bank and then transfer the cash to L.A. or Vancouver to buy a house for cash. Repeat as necessary.)
All this systemic corruption is accepted as long as the conveyor belt of wealth is moving: that the previous political Plutocracy skimmed their $4 trillion and absconded with their ill-gotten gains is OK to their replacements, as long as there is another $6 trillion to be skimmed.
The problem is there isn’t another $6 trillion to be skimmed. It has taken an enormous credit bubble of $23 trillion (The $23 Trillion Credit Bubble In China Is Starting To Collapse – What Next?) plus the monumental credit expansion of the shadow banking system in China to enable the skimming of $6 trillion by the political/financial Plutocracy.
This $23 trillion credit bubble is roughly twice the size of China’s entire GDP ($12 trillion). That this credit bubble is generating less return in the real economy is obvious–diminishing returns have set in with a vengeance.
The revolution never starts with the oppressed peasantry–it starts with the bourgeois who bought the fantasy of another $6 trillion to be skimmed and credit bubbles/ real estate valuations that never go down. The leadership in China has managed to create a propaganda bubble of epic proportions: Chinese leaders are supposed to have a long-term view that puts the West to shame.
Alas, the secret view of China’s leadership is considerably shorter-term: U.S. dollars in Swiss bank accounts, real estate in Vancouver, San Francisco, New York City, London, Geneva, etc. and whatever other assets can be scooped up with looted billions.
Corruption isn’t just abstract: Much of China’s building boom will not last a generation, much less a long-term timeline. This toppled tower is an apt metaphor for China’s financialized crony-capitalist credit bubble and its shoddy corruption-riddled construction:
Nine held over Shanghai building collapse
The Chinese authorities are holding nine people in connection with the collapse of a 13-storey block of flats, raising fresh questions about corruption and shoddy practices in China’s construction industry.
China’s Towers and U.S. McMansions: When Things Fall Apart (Literally) (April 14, 2010).
India’s system is different, but equally corrupt. Combine feudalism and religious tradition with a helping of modern crony capitalism and neofeudal looting, add a dash of post-Imperial flavoring and voila, corruption on every level.
The sad irony of this pervasive, systemic corruption that enriches the Plutocracy is that the average Indian and Chinese citizen is basically honest. Non-Elites will tolerate the corruption at the top as long as they believe their own prosperity is advancing. Once it becomes clear that their prosperity has been hijacked by the Plutocracy, tolerance of oppression, corruption and the vast inequalities of wealth being skimmed by the well-connected few will wear thin.
The spark that ignites the powder keg cannot be predicted or suppressed. Don’t look to the disenfranchised peasantry as the source, though they are ready enough to cast off the Powers That Be; look to those who believed the gilded promises issued by the looters and discovered that the fruits of their labor and their hopes is disillusionment on a scale as vast as the skim looted from their nation by their self-serving leadership.
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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Resolution #1: Let’s Call Things What They Really Are in 2014
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Resolution #1: Let’s Call Things What They Really Are in 2014.
The Status Quo system is failing. Its collapse will be messy. Starting to call things what they really are is a necessary first step to working with this reality.
Longtime correspondent Harun I. has offered a refreshing resolution for 2014: let’s start calling things what they actually are, rather than continue using officially sanctioned half-truths and misdirections. Language defines the context, meaning and agenda–in other words, everything. If we continue using Orwellian language, we get an Orwellian world of officially sanctioned deceptions passing as reality.
Here are Harun’s suggestions should we accept the value of Calling Things What They Really Are. This may well be one of the most insightful explanations of our financial system you will ever read:
Bank Deposit: An unsecured personal loan. The bank can do whatever it wishes with the money. The money may not be returned (ironically, people pay for this “service”).
Fractional Reserve Banking (Lending): Leverage. A bank has only a fraction of what it owes to its depositors. In a 10% fractional reserve system, the bank is only required to have ten cents of every dollar in its vaults.
The IMF is suggesting a 10% default by European banks. In a 10% reserve system, this is a reversal. Effectively, one person is going to get their money back and nine others are not. This may reset the banking system but the economic consequences due to the loss of purchasing power at such a scale will be significant.
Bank Bailout: The bank has lost its depositors money and thence government forces the public to borrow money they have a) already earned, b) from the very banks that supposedly have no money, and c) do so at interest (which must be borrowed). Effectively it is a failure and therefore a default.
Bank Bail-in: Every dollar placed at a bank is a dollar it owes to someone (liability). When the bank has lost all or a portion of its depositors’ money, it cannot return what it owes. Rather than forcing the people that are owed money by the bank to borrow money to put back in their accounts, the bank merely points out that it doesn’t have the money. This is a default.
Default = Default.
Money: Has no other purpose than to allow people to trade things they have worked to make or services they have performed. Holding on to it may allow one to trade for more or less of a particular good or service in the future. Money is a promise but not a guarantee that it will be exchangeable for something in the future. It is credit and debt.
Without a tangible good or service to trade money is worthless. If I have made a fine overcoat and you, with your skills in carpentry, have made an exquisite chair, we can trade these things directly. In this case money is worthless. It does not work the other way around. Goods and services do not become worthless in the absence of money. My coat will still have value even if I choose to wear it to keep warm. Your chair will have value even if you just choose to sit in it.
This is a critical distinction — and it has been completely lost on just about everyone. We have become completely divorced from the goods and services we make and provide and the money we use to trade these goods and services. At the core of this divorce is Fractional or zero Reserve Banking.
Let’s propose that you and I traded our goods and we deposited our goods in a bank. The bank immediately pledges my chair and your coat to ten other people. Some time later I engage in a redecoration of my home and want my chair. Winter comes and you want your coat. Immediately there is a problem. The bank owes our goods to ten other people. The only way for them to resolve this situation is to either get everyone to accept a fraction of the coat and chair, which of course isn’t very practical, reduce their liability by giving one person the chair and one person the coat and the other ten people get nothing (bail in), or get you and I to bail them out by producing eleven more chairs and coats (10 plus interest).
You see, if in the definitions of bailout and bail in we simply substitute the word money with the words goods and services, the situation loses its ambiguity. When we understand internally what money represents, then we understand what the term Bank backstops really mean. A bank can only be backstopped, bailed out or bailed in, by labor because that is the only thing that “money” represents.
If we understand the definition of money then when we discuss the Federal Reserve’s leverage, e.g. 72 to 1, we immediately understand that for each unit of labor performed 72 are owed. If for each hour of labor 72 is owed, how is this ever make that up? The clever person would pipe up and say, I’ll just work for 72 hours straight. But for each of those 72 hours he has worked he now owes 72. When we understand this, we understand that it is an event horizon.
We then understand that every bit of QE (quantitative easing) is a pledge of labor someone must perform at some point in time and that the rate of performance required is impossible.
If we now understand money and leverage and are to propose debt forgiveness then we must embrace rather than bemoan austerity because austerity is the necessary result of 10 other people not getting a chair to sit in or a warm coat for the winter.
With these concepts firmly in tow we begin to see that all of this hand wringing over paying off the $17 trillion in debt is, at best, a fools errand. Yes, in public politicians try to sooth us by appearing concerned. But behind closed doors, the Fed, Treasury, the Congress and the Executive, are all trying to figure out how we are going to borrow more so that over the next doubling period (about 10 years) debt will expand to a necessary $34 trillion.
Some additional clarification may be needed to explain leverage and work. At 72 to 1 the other option is to create 72 units in the time it takes to make one. In other words, if it took you and I one month to create our goods, we must create 72 coats and chairs in that one month. Broken down into hours, if we worked at full capacity 8 hours per day to create one coat and chair, we must do enough work in that 8 hours to create 72 coats and chairs.
Ultimately, work is nothing more than an exchange of energy, and the equation for any exchange of energy is quantifiable and finite (the equation must always balance). If we measured labor output in calories instead of money, the deception disappears. People may not be willing to expend 10 calories for 1. We would also understand that 1 calorie cannot create 10.
These concepts (thermodynamics) are esoteric to the point a 5th grader would have trouble understanding. But what is easily understandable is that if we all did the same work everyday but got less food because of an increase of incoming workers, yes, we would all have food – and we would all soon become malnourished or starved.
How would people react if the Fed said that for every loaf of bread it takes out of the system 72 loafs of bread will disappear?
We must also understand that a lever transmits torque, it does not create more torque.
It is at this point of awareness that it becomes clear that to balance the equation, it is unavoidable that people are not going to get most or all of what they have been promised (austerity). It is at this point that the sober realization arises that we have to dramatically change our expectation of the future.
Credit: Allows trade of something for a promise. Regardless of whatever expectation that may exist, something has been traded or given for no service performed or product yet created. Simply, something has been traded for nothing.
Federal Reserve System: A group of secretly privately owned banks (which, logically were among those who lost all of their depositors money and most certainly compose the primary dealers), that control the global money supply by making more or less credit/money available. It is also supposed to regulate banks within its system.
Even if this system functioned as designed rather than what it has morphed into, it still reads: a subsidiary formed but not funded by member banks and sanctioned by government to lend money to corporations and member banks (to themselves) against strong collateral (which no other bank would touch). Meaning the assets they own are good, but nobody wants them (i.e. the assets are worthless). In essence, this gets those great and wonderful assets off corporation’s and member bank’s books at full value.
Today this subsidiary of the member banks (the banks that own the Fed), loans money to its parent banks to buy all sorts of debt (mostly government debt), then goes about removing that debt (asset) from its parent bank’s balance sheet by buying it from them at full price, regardless of what it would have fetched in the market place.
At the most cursory glance, one begins to see how this farcically incestuous relationship would open the door to cronyism, political capture, monetary dominance, and serious abuses of public trust. Whether there is an awakening on the part of of the public is irrelevant. This system is failing. Its collapse will be messy.
There is no need to fret over debt or the monetary system, or the Feds economic and monetary “models”. There is no need to grouse about their manipulations. These things are destined to fail and are already doing so. What we will do in the aftermath of their complete failure, however, is probably of utmost importance.”
Growth: Heavily manipulated statistics that reflect the increasing dominance of crony/State capitalism, passed off as “growth” in the real, lived-in economy. Those crony cartels that are receiving the Federal Reserve’s “free money” from quantitative easing (QE) are “growing,” and everything that isn’t receiving the Fed’s “free money” is stagnating.
I am sure you can add your own list of “calling things what they really are.”
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Marc Faber Warns “The Bubble Could Burst Any Day”; Prefers Physical Gold To Bitcoin | Zero Hedge
Marc Faber Warns “The Bubble Could Burst Any Day”; Prefers Physical Gold To Bitcoin | Zero Hedge.
“The Fed’s policies have actually led to a lot of problems around the world,” Marc Faber begins his discussion with Bloomberg TV’s Trish Regan, especially “people in the lower income groups [who] spend say 30% of their income on energy, transportation, and so forth, electricity and gasoline.” The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report author goes on to discuss everything from how the Fed is creating a two-class system around the world, the inexorable growth of governments, buying votes, Bitcoin, interest rates, wealth taxes, and overall market valuations. “We are in a gigantic financial asset bubble,” Faber explains, “everybody’s bullish,” but he sees a slowing global economy (as do we e.g. Baltic Dry Index); “[The bubble] could burst any day. I think we are very stretched.” Faber is on fire…
Take 10 minutes and listen…
Prepare yourself… “In China, if I say what I am saying about the USA, they would not let me in the country”
Faber on the Fed and how far the ‘rubber band can be stretched’:
“We have to distinguish between the financial economy, the financial sector, and the economy of the well-to-do people that benefit from rising asset prices, from rising prices of wines, and paintings and art, and bonds, and equities, and high-end properties in the Hamptons and West 15 here in New York and so forth — and the average person, the typical household, the so-called ‘median household’, or the working class people. And the Fed’s policies have actually led to a lot of problems around the world in the sense that they’re not only responsible, but partly responsible that energy prices are where they are, they’re up from $10 or $12 in 1999 to now around $100 a barrel. Food prices are up and a lot of other prices are up. So on your income, energy prices have very little impact because you at Bloomberg – you, young man – you make so much money. But for the poor people, it has an impact.Some people in the lower income groups, they spend say 30% of their income on energy, transportation, and so forth, electricity and gasoline.”
On whether the Fed is creating a two-class system:
“Correct, largely. The problem is then that you have people like Bill de Blasio, they come in and say: ‘you know what’s the problem? All these rich guys. Because of these rich people, you are poor. They take advantage of you. So, let’s go and tax them.’ The IMF has come out with a paper in Europe that essentially the well-to-do people should pay a 10% wealth task — a one-time wealth tax. I can assure you, a one-time wealth tax, 10%, will become an every-year’s tax eventually.”
On how to help the people on the lower end of the economic spectrum:
“This is the point I’d like to make. All of these professors and academics at the Fed who never really worked in the private sector a single day in their lives, and write papers nobody reads and nobody’s is interested in. Why would they want not write about how you structure an economic system that lifts the standard of living of most people? You can’t lift everybody.”
“We had that in the 19th century in the U.S. because we had very small government at the time. The entire government — local, state federal — was less than 20% of the economy. Now it is close to 50% of the economy.”
On whether the government is spending too much money:
“The larger the government becomes, the less economic growth you have and the more crony capitalism and corruptions you have. Because big corporations — and especially the money printers, they’re the most powerful people in the world, they control the governments. The U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and the government is one and the same. The Fed, they finance the Treasury, so the government can go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then they finance transfer payments to essentially buy votes so you can get elected.”
On bitcoin:
“I prefer physical gold and silver, platinum to bitcoin. Bitcoin can have a lot of competition. Gold, silver, platinum — they have no competition. How do you value a bitcoin? I can value gold to some extent and compare say gold to the quantity of money that is floating around the world, to the wealth increase, and to the monetary base increase, to the credit increase, and so forth and so on, and to the production costs. So I have an idea of where gold should be. I’m not sure because prices overshoot. How do you value Netflix? Is it overpriced or underpriced? Is Tesla overpriced, underpriced?”
On interest rates:
“But one thing I wanted to show you and talk about because you said that lower interest rates help people. Well, if money trending helps everybody, then why does not everybody in the whole world always have zero interest rates? And everybody would be rich. You keep on printing money and you don’t need to work here, you don’t need to put on makeup. I could stay in bed the whole day and go drinking in the evenings. So, let’s just print money and be all happy. It doesn’t add up. One thing about the figures you showed: first of all, you live in New York. Do you really think that your cost-of-living increase is a 1.2% per annum? You really believe that? It doesn’t feel like more, it feels like five times more, or even ten times more.”
“Number two, by keeping interest rates at zero percent on the Fed fund rate — i want to emphasize that this is now going on in March of 2014 for five years. It is not something new. For five years this has happened. You penalize the income earners, the savers who save, your parents, why should your parents be forced to speculate in stocks and in real estate and everything under the sun?“
On his view of overvalued stocks, including Facebook:
“I think it is to a large extent a fad. People they go on Facebook – what they do is they put pictures on and the only people that watch these pictures are themselves. They all want to be stars. It is a very distractive kind of occupation. I can’t imagine that this would have a lot of value. I would rather own – I don’t own it because I think it is very highly priced – I would rather own a company like Alibaba or Amazon or Google, than Facebook, personally. This is my view. Other people have different views. That’s what makes the market. Some people are buying it and some people are selling it.”
On overall market valuation concerns:
“I think we are in a gigantic financial asset bubble. But it is interesting that that despite of all the money printing, bond yields didn’t go down. They bottomed out on July 25, 2012 at 1.43% on the 10-years. We went to over 3.0%. We’re now at 2.85% or something thereabout. But we’re up substantially. Now, this hasn’t had an impact on stocks yet. In fact, it pushed money into the stock market out of the bond market. But if the 10-years goes to say 3.5% to 4.0%, then the 30-year goes to close to 5.0%, the mortgage rates go to 6.0%. That will hit the economy very hard.”
“[The bubble] could burst before. It could burst any day. I think we are very stretched. Sentiment figures are very, very bullish. Everybody’s bullish. The reality is they’re very bullish because they think the economy will accelerate on the upside. But my view is very different. The global economy is slowing down, because the global economy’s largely emerging economies nowadays, and there’s no growth in exports in emerging economies, there’s no growth, in the local economies. So, I feel that the valuations are high, the corporate profits have been boosted largely because of the falling interest rates.”
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Former Tory minister on the hot seat over Enbridge lobbying gig – Inside Politics
Former Tory minister on the hot seat over Enbridge lobbying gig – Inside Politics.
Former Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl is facing questions over a possible conflict of interest after the Vancouver Observer revealed that he’s been hired by Enbridge to help them sell the provincial BC government on the merits of the Northern Gateway pipeline project.
On Monday, ForestEthics Advocacy issued a statement calling on Strahl to step down from his current gig as chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee, the five-person board charged with keeping an eye on Canada’s top secret spy agency.
“In late 2013 it emerged that the Harper government had used CSIS and the RCMP to spy on critics of oil pipeline projects, including the Sierra Club, the Council of Canadians and Idle No More,” the release noted. .
“ForestEthics Advocacy and its supporters were among those Canadians targeted for surveillance. Given these events, and Strahl’s close ties to both his former colleagues in Ottawa and Canada’s spy agency, his registration to lobby for Enbridge is–at best–a conflict of interest. ”
Later that day, New Democrat natural resources critic and BC MP Nathan Cullen put out a release claiming that Strahl had been “caught” lobbying for the company.
Cullen acknowledges that, as a former minister, Strahl is currently barred from lobbying the federal government under the cooling-off provisions put in place by the Conservatives in 2006, but warns that “vague guidelines” could allow him to “skirt the rules and lobby the province. even on a federal pipeline issue.”
But under current federal ethics rules, the SIRC chairmanship is considered a part-time appointment, which exempts Strahl from many of the specific restrictions imposed by the Conflict of Interest Act.
Read the full list of do’s and don’ts for part-time public office holders here.
Unlike a full-time reporting public office holder, Strahl is no longer obliged to disclose his outside activities to the ethics commissioner, or provide the same sort of public declaration of assets, liabilities and other income that he had to file during his tenure in cabinet.
He is, however, still subject to the five-year ban on lobbying the federal government, as well as the general provisions of the Conflict of Interest Act that apply to all public office holders, which forbid him from using his current position, or information that isn’t available to the general public, to influence any decision that could further private interests.
That doesn’t mean he can’t work for Enbridge — or, indeed, lobby the province on its behalf. He just can’t exploit inside information, or his part-time gig at SIRC, while doing so.
Still, given the political sensitivities surrounding both the pipeline file and the conduct of Canada’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, it seems unlikely that the controversy over his dual roles will be put to rest simply by pointing out that he’s following the rules.
This was, after all, the government that came to power vowing to block the so-called ‘revolving door’ between politics and private sector advocacy.
Given that, it’s fair to ask whether it makes sense to treat a highly sensitive post like the SIRC chairmanship as just another part-time job.
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oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Pimping the Empire, Progressive-Style
oftwominds-Charles Hugh Smith: Pimping the Empire, Progressive-Style.
Supporting the central state to protect your favored cartels is simply pimping for the Empire.
The central illusion of both Left (so-called Progressives) and Right (so-called conservatives) is that the Central State’s essentially unlimited powers can be narrowly directed to further their agenda.
(I say “so-called” because the “Progressives” are not actually progressive, and the “Conservatives” are not actually conservative. Those labels are Orwellian double-speak, designed to mask the disastrous consequences of each ideology’s actual policies.)
Let’s begin by stipulating that ideology, any ideology, is an intellectual and emotional shortcut that offers believers ready-made explanations, goals, narratives and enemies without any difficult, time-consuming analysis, study or skeptical inquiry. This is the ultimate appeal of ideology: accepting the ideology relieves the believer of the burdens of analysis, skeptical inquiry, uncertainty/doubt and responsibility: all the answers, goals and narratives are prepackaged and mashed together for easy consumption.
This is one of the core messages of Erich Fromm’s classic exploration of ideology and authoritarianism, Escape from Freedom.
And what is the essential foundation of authoritarianism? A central state. This is not coincidental.
What few grasp is the teleology of the centralized state: by its very nature (i.e. as a consequence of its essentially unlimited powers), the central state is genetically programmed to become an authoritarian state devoted to self-preservation and the extension of its reach and power.
The central illusion of Progressives is that an all-powerful central state will not become a self-serving expansive empire, but will be content to wield its vast powers to protect its favored cartels/monopolies and distribute money skimmed from the citizenry to Progressive constituencies such as public unions, healthcare and education.
This is an absurd fantasy. Once you give a central state essentially unlimited power to stripmine income and wealth from its citizens, create and/or borrow essentially unlimited sums of money, protect private (and politically powerful) cartels from competition and project military, financial and diplomatic power around the globe, the state will pursue Authoritarianism and Empire as a consequence of possessing those powers.
You can’t cede unlimited, highly concentrated powers to the central state and then expect the state not to fulfill its teleogical imperative to protect and extend its powers. The state with unlimited powers will be ontologically predisposed to view any citizen that seeks to limit its expansion of power as an enemy to be suppressed, imprisoned or marginalized.
The state with unlimited powers will be ontologically predisposed to protecting its powers by cloaking all the important inner workings of the state behind a veil of secrecy, and pursuing and punishing any whistleblowers who reveal the corrupt, self-serving workings of the state.
The state with unlimited powers will be ontologically predisposed to view any other nation or alliance as a potential threat, and thus the state will pursue any and all means to distrupt or counter those potential threats.
The state with unlimited powers will be ontologically predisposed to create and distribute propaganda to mask its self-serving nature and its perpetual agenda of extending its powers, lest some threat arise that limits those powers.
Democracy and a central state with unlimited powers are teleologically incompatible.
Progressives worship the central state and cede it essentially unlimited powers because they want that state to be powerful enough to impose their agenda on others and reward their constituencies.
But it doesn’t work that way. Once you cede unlimited, highly concentrated power to the central state, you get an authoritarian empire that is driven to protect itself from any threat at all costs–including democracy, though the state may maintain a facade of carefully managed “democracy” as part of its propaganda machinery.
You cannot have a state with essentially unlimited power and not end up with cartel-capitalism. So-called Progressives defend their favored cartel-fiefdoms of healthcare and education (and the “conservative” banking and defense cartels, too, to insure banks fund their campaigns and to protect their political flank with a “strong on defense” carte blanche to the National Security cartels), yet these cartels are busy bankrupting the nation and destroying the very programs Progressives claim to hold dear.
You can’t have it both ways, Progressives: if you support a central state with essentially unlimited power to protect and fund your constituent cartels, you end up with self-liquidating cartel-capitalism, a state bent on protecting itself from the uncertainties/risks of democracy and a global Empire that is teleologically driven to expand its reach and power by any and all means available.
Once you choose to cede essentially unlimited powers to the central state, all decisions after that are made in service of the state. The idea that the state can be limited to helping the needy is illusory.
The only legitimate duties of the state are limited: 1) protect the commons from destruction and exploitation; 2) protect the citizenry from exploitation or oppression by those with superior power or resources; 3) maintain transparency in all governance and 4) maintain a system of sound money.
The so-called Progressives will learn what the teleology of the state means in the real world when the state comes after them. Once you cede unlimited power to the central state, any attempt to limit that power marks you as an enemy.
War at Home: Covert action against U.S. activists.
Supporting the central state to protect your favored cartels and protect your political power over the state’s tax revenues is simply pimping for the Empire. You can call it “progressive,” but it’s still pimping for the Empire.
Olduvaiblog: Musings on the coming collapse 