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Title: An Economy Destroyed: The Enemy Is Washington
Source:
Global Research
URL Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25732
Published: Jul 24, 2011
Author: Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Post Date: 2011-07-24 13:06:02 by X-15
Ping List: *THE LAST GREAT DEPRESSION* Subscribe to *THE LAST GREAT DEPRESSION*
Keywords: None
Views: 147
Comments: 13
Recently, the bond rating agencies that gave junk derivatives triple-A ratings threatened to downgrade US Treasury bonds if the White House and Congress did not reach a deficit reduction deal and debt ceiling increase. The downgrade threat is not credible, and neither is the default threat. Both are make-believe crises that are being hyped in order to force cutbacks in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. If the rating agencies downgraded Treasuries, the company executives would be arrested for the fraudulent ratings that they gave to the junk that Wall Street peddled to the rest of the world. The companies would be destroyed and their ratings discredited. The US government will never default on its bonds, because the bonds, unlike those of Greece, Spain, and Ireland, are payable in its own currency. Regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised, the Federal Reserve will continue to purchase the Treasury’s debt. If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, then so is the US government. There is no budget focus on the illegal wars and military occupations that the US government has underway in at least six countries or the 66-year old US occupations of Japan and Germany and the ring of military bases being constructed around Russia. The total military/security budget is in the vicinity of $1.1-$1.2 trillion, or 70% -75% of the federal budget deficit. In contrast, Social Security is solvent. Medicare expenditures are coming close to exceeding the 2.3% payroll tax that funds Medicare, but it is dishonest for politicians and pundits to blame the US budget deficit on “entitlement programs.” Entitlements are funded with a payroll tax. Wars are not funded. The criminal Bush regime lied to Americans and claimed that the Iraq war would only cost $70 billion at the most and would be paid for with Iraq oil revenues. When Bush’s chief economic advisor, Larry Lindsay, said the Iraq invasion would cost $200 billion, the White House Moron fired him. In fact, Lindsay was off by a factor of 20. Economic and budget experts have calculated that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have consumed $4,000 billion in out-of-pocket and already incurred future costs. In other words, the ongoing wars and occupations have already eaten up the $4 trillion by which Obama hopes to cut federal spending over the next ten years. Bomb now, pay later. As taxing the rich is not part of the political solution, the focus is on rewarding the insurance companies by privatizing Medicare at some future date with government subsidized insurance premiums, by capping Medicaid, and by loading the diminishing middle class with additional Social Security tax. Washington’s priorities and those of its presstitutes could not be clearer. President Obama, like George W. Bush before him, both parties in Congress, the print and TV media, and National Public Radio have made it clear that war is a far more important priority than health care and old age pensions for Americans. The American people and their wants and needs are not represented in Washington. Washington serves powerful interest groups, such as the military/security complex, Wall Street and the banksters, agribusiness, the oil companies, the insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, and the mining and timber industries. Washington endows these interests with excess profits by committing war crimes and terrorizing foreign populations with bombs, drones, and invasions, by deregulating the financial sector and bailing it out of its greed-driven mistakes after it has stolen Americans’ pensions, homes, and jobs, by refusing to protect the land, air, water, oceans and wildlife from polluters and despoilers, and by constructing a health care system with the highest costs and highest profits in the world. The way to reduce health care costs is to take out gobs of costs and profits with a single payer system. A private health care system can continue to operate alongside for those who can afford it. The way to get the budget under control is to stop the gratuitous hegemonic wars, wars that will end in a nuclear confrontation. The US economy is in a deepening recession from which recovery is not possible, because American middle class jobs in manufacturing and professional services have been offshored and given to foreigners. US GDP, consumer purchasing power, and tax base have been handed over to China, India, and Indonesia in order that Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate CEOs can earn more. When the goods and services produced offshore come back into America, they arrive as imports. The trade balance worsens, the US dollar declines further in exchange value, and prices rise for Americans, whose incomes are stagnant or falling. This is economic destruction. It always occurs when an oligarchy seizes control of a government. The short-run profits of the powerful are maximized at the expense of the viability of the economy. The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3% unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to drive the economy. Washington’s response to this dilemma is to increase the austerity! Cutting back Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, forcing down wages by destroying unions and offshoring jobs (which results in a labor surplus and lower wages), and driving up the prices of food and energy by depreciating the dollar further erodes consumer purchasing power. The Federal Reserve can print money to rescue the crooked financial institutions, but it cannot rescue the American consumer. As a final point, confront the fact that you are even lied to about “deficit reduction.” Even if Obama gets his $4 trillion “deficit reduction” over the next decade, it does not mean that the current national debt will be $4 trillion less than it currently is. The “reduction” merely means that the growth in the national debt will be $4 trillion less than otherwise. Regardless of any “deficit reduction,” the national debt ten years from now will be much higher than it presently is.
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#1. To: X-15 (#0)
The US economy is driven by consumer demand, but with 22.3% unemployment, stagnant and declining wages and salaries, and consumer debt burdens so high that consumers cannot borrow to spend, there is nothing to drive the economy. U.S. Constitution - Article IV, Section 4: NO BORDERS + NO LAWS = NO COUNTRY
There's always a false-flag event and the lash of our Luciferian overlords during our mortal existence to unite us as we loose our last shred of freedom. That's the final "ace" up the sleeve of the ungodly khazars.
Obummer is Robert Mugabe's half-assed Kenyan cousin. I get more and more pissed- off every day that sumbitch is desecrating the White House with his nigger- parties and destroying the last remnants of America with his marxist-leninist ideology.
I still have a hard time, emotionally, believing the American people elected as President someone who is half drunken African kaffir and half leftwing white trash race traitor. When he's gone it will be for me like it was never there.
*Before anyone gets their panties in a bunch, I invite you to compare the number of Irish, Italian, German, and Scandinavian political philosophers who have written on liberty and limited government with the number of English philosophers who published works on the subject" - Vox Day
I'm more pissed at the gutless congress for not having formal hearings demanding proof of citizenship and the release of all the records he's concealing. He's the cia's ultimate black-op.
Break the Conventions - Keep the Commandments - G.K.Chesterson The jiz has congress by their short-hairs when it comes to their CIA house- negro. John McStain was already a defeated man the very second he accepted the GOP nomination and he knew it the whole time he played along with "the program".
I'm tired of the quadrennial spectacle that squanders hundreds of millions for exactly nothing. I'll continue to back and support RP, but I have no real expectation to ever be able to vote for him in the general election.
Break the Conventions - Keep the Commandments - G.K.Chesterson Sometimes I think the sob is Idi Amin's son. This bs talk about "summoning" people to the White House instead of "inviting" them has set me on edge. Who does Obama think he is to "summon" people? His ears would be blistered if I had been one of the ones "summoned."
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Lord Acton He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein
The halfrican enjoys thinking that he's the HNIC.
Break the Conventions - Keep the Commandments - G.K.Chesterson whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/11thmarble.php THE ELEVENTH MARBLE by Michael Rivero Any five-year old child knows that if you put ten marbles into a tin can, you can only take ten marbles back out. No amount of wishful thinking, dreaming, or praying, will yield that eleventh marble from inside that can. That eleventh marble does not exist. It never did, and it never will. All discussions about the eleventh marble are the product of imagination. The eleventh marble is a fantasy. Private central bankers issuing the public currency as interest-bearing loans operate on the belief that they can put ten marbles (dollars) into a tin can (the world) and magically get 11 marbles back out. Thus, we may conclude that the the bankers are dumber than five-year old children! But unlike five-year old children, the bankers will take your home, your business, and your nation when they don't get that eleventh marble! The spoiled child may cry and throw a tantrum, but that will be the end of their upset. The spoiled banker, however, in his or her arrogant rage that they cannot have the eleventh marble their imagination says must still be in that tin can, may start a war before they will admit that eleventh marble was never really there. Economies are like tin cans. Before you can take a marble out, you must have put a marble in. Nobody can give you a marble that does not exist, yet this simple reality is lost to the priests of that fantastic religion called banking in that unholiest of temples called the IMF. Their religious doctrine seems to be that there must always be an eleventh marble inside the tin can, and that the tin can unfairly withholds that eleventh marble, indeed cheats them of their right to the eleventh marble, purely out of spite. That faith in the existence of the eleventh marble, unseen and improvable, is the article of faith the religion of banking rests on. It is far easier to burn the heretics than to question the dogma. Today we see the bankers, having already retrieved their ten marbles from the tin can, flogging the world for that missing eleventh marble. Greece does not have that eleventh marble, so they turn to Germany and ask, "Do you have an eleventh marble", and Germany replies, "Sorry, but the bankers already took the ten marbles they put in our tin can, and we are searching for an eleventh marble ourselves. Try the Americans." The Americans, of course, have only just surrendered the last of their ten marbles back to the bankers and are looking under seat cushions for that missing eleventh marble nobody seems able to find. But the eleventh marble will never be found. After all that mayhem brought down on the tin can there still will be no eleventh marble. It does not exist. It never did, and it never will. The problem with all modern reserve banking systems is that the moment the first bank note goes into circulation as the proceed of a loan at interest, more money is owed to the banks than actually exists. Ten marbles have been put into the tin can, but the bankers see 11 marbles owed back to them. Sooner or later the non-existence of that eleventh marble will create a crises of faith. People will stop believing in the religion called private central banking, and that crisis of faith will bring the system crashing down, as did the Temple of Baal in ancient times when the Syrians saw through the priests' trickery. This evil magic of creating money out of debt was a fraud all along, as fraudulent and silly as the idea that one can put ten marbles into a tin can, and take out eleven. In ages to come economists will look back at this failed experiment in debt-based currency, and dump it into the same category of human folly as Tulip mania, The Nation of Poyais, Credit Mobilier, the Great South Seas Company, and Mortgage-Backed Securities.
Great article and all true. The less spent on citizens for SS the more of the payroll taxes ear marked for SS that the pols can hand out to their corporate buddies and then receive loot from those same corporations. Everybodys happy but the workers who earned the money in the first place.
Some of those people in Congress need to grow a spine and tell Obama, in no uncertain terms, that he could not summon people anywhere. That he could invite them and if they wanted to come, fine, and if not that is ok too. I get so tired of this stupid $#it I could scream.
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. Lord Acton He (Gordon Duff) also implies that forcibly removing Obama, a Constitution-hating, on-the-down-low, crackhead Communist, is an attack on America, Mom, and apple pie. I swear these military people are worse than useless. Just look around at the condition of the country and tell me if they have fulfilled their oaths to protect the nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. The only difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits. Albert Einstein
#2. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#1)
(Edited)
there is nothing to drive the economy.
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#3. To: X-15, HAPPY2BME-4UM (#2)
#4. To: TwentyTwelve, *Obama Reality Check* (#3)
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#5. To: X-15 (#4)
desecrating the White House
#6. To: X-15, 4 (#4)
#7. To: Lod (#6)
-Schweizerische Schuetzenzeitung (Swiss Shooting Federation) April, 1941
#8. To: X-15 (#7)
#9. To: X-15 (#4)
Obummer is Robert Mugabe's half-assed Kenyan cousin.
OsamaBinGoldstein
#10. To: James Deffenbach (#9)
#11. To: Lod (#8)
#12. To: X-15 (#0)
"Satan / Cheney in "08" 
#13. To: Lod (#10)
The halfrican enjoys thinking that he's the HNIC.
OsamaBinGoldstein
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