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Archive for the ‘Oligarchy’ Category

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as the final and total catastrophe of the currency involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

The last week has offered an amusing display of the difference between the cheerleading corporate mainstream media, lying Wall Street shills and the critical thinking analysts like Zero Hedge, Mike Shedlock, Jesse, and John Hussman. What passes for journalism at CNBC and the rest of the mainstream print and TV media is beyond laughable. Their America is all about feelings. Are we confident? Are we bullish? Are we optimistic about the future? America has turned into a giant confidence game. The governing elite spend their time spinning stories about recovery and manipulating public opinion so people will feel good and spend money. Facts are inconvenient to their storyline. The truth is for suckers. They know what is best for us and will tell us what to do and when to do it.

The false storyline last week was the dramatic surge in new jobs. This fantastic news was utilized by the six banks that account for 80% of the stock market trading to propel the NASDAQ to an eleven year high and the Dow Jones to a four year high. The compliant corporate press did their part with blaring headlines of good cheer. The entire sham was designed to make Joe the Plumber pull out one of his 15 credit cards and buy a new 72 inch 3D HDTV for this weekend’s Super Bowl. When you watch a CNBC talking head interviewing a Wall Street shyster realize you have the 1% interviewing the .01% about how great things are.

What you most certainly did not hear from the MSM is that the NASDAQ is still down 42% from its 2000 high of 5,048. None of the brain dead twits on CNBC pointed out the S&P 500 is trading at the exact same level it reached on April 8, 1999. Twelve or thirteen years of zero or negative returns are meaningless when a story needs to be sold. On Friday the hyperbole utilized by the media mouthpieces was off the charts, leading to an all-out brawl between the critical thinking blogosphere and the non-thinking ”professionals” spouting the government sanctioned propaganda. Accusations flew back and forth about who was misinterpreting the data. I found it hysterical that anyone would debate the accuracy of BLS (Bureau of Lies & Swindles) data.

The drones at this government propaganda agency relentlessly massage the data until they achieve a happy ending. They use a birth/death model to create jobs out of thin air, later adjusting those phantom jobs away in a press release on a Friday night. They create new categories of Americans to pretend they aren’t really unemployed. They use more models to make adjustments for seasonality. Then they make massive one-time adjustments for the Census. Essentially, you can conclude that anything the BLS reports on a monthly basis is a wild ass guess, massaged to present the most optimistic view of the world. The government preferred unemployment rate of 8.3% is a terrible joke and the MSM dutifully spouts this drivel to a zombie-like public. If the governing elite were to report the truth, the public would realize we are in the midst of a 2nd Great Depression.

The unemployment rate during the Great Depression reached 25%. Without the BLS “adjustments” the real unemployment rate in this country is 23%. Cheerleading and packaging the data in a way to mislead the public does not change the facts:

• There are 242 million working age Americans. Only 142 million Americans are working. For the math challenged, such as CNBC analysts, that means 100 million working age Americans (41.5%) are not working. But don’t worry, the BLS says the unemployment rate is only 8.3%. Things are going so swimmingly well in this country the other 33.2% are kicking back enjoying the good life.
• The labor force participation rate and employment to population ratio are at 30 year lows. The number of Americans supposedly not in the labor force is at an all-time record of 87.9 million. A corporate MSM pundit like Steve Liesman would explain this away as the Baby Boomers beginning to retire. Great storyline, but the facts prove that old timers are so desperate for cash they have dramatically increased their participation in the labor market.

• The data being dished out by the government on a daily basis does not pass the smell test. The working age population since 2000 has grown by 30 million people. The number of people working has grown by only 4.7 million. A critical thinker would conclude the unemployment rate should be dramatically higher than the reported 8.3%. But the government falsely reports the labor force has only increased by 11.8 million in the last eleven years. They have the gall to report that 17.9 million Americans just decided to leave the workforce. The economy was booming in 2000. It sucks today. Don’t more people need jobs when times are tougher? The Boomers retiring storyline has already proven to be false. The fact that 46 million (15% of total population) people are on food stamps is a testament to the BLS lie. A look at history proves how badly the current figures reek to high heaven:
• 2000 to 2011 – Not in Labor Force increased by 17.9 million.
• 1990′s – Not in Labor Force increased by 5 million.
• 1980′s – Not in Labor Force increased by 1.7 million.
• The Not in the Labor Force category is utilized to hide how bad the employment situation in this country really is. They conclude that 17 million out of 38 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 are not in the labor force. That is complete bullshit. From the time I turned 16, I worked. Everyone I knew worked. I worked through high school and college. It is a lie that 45% of these people don’t want a job. If you dig into their data, you realize the horrific state of employment in this country:
• 74% of 16 to 19 year olds are not employed
• 85% of black 16 to 19 year olds are not employed
• 31% of black 25 to 54 year old men are not employed
• 40% of 20 to 24 year olds are not employed
• 22% of 25 to 29 year old males are not employed
• 22% of 50 to 54 year old males are not employed
• According to the BLS, 11% of men between 25 and 54 are not in the labor force

Not only is real unemployment at Depressionary levels, but those that do have jobs are falling further and further behind. Wages have gone up less than 2% in the last year and have been rising at an annual rate below 3% for the last four years. According to our friends at the BLS, inflation has risen 3% in the last year. This is almost as ludicrous as their unemployment rate. Anyone living in the real world, as opposed to the BLS model world, knows that inflation on the things we need to live has been rising in excess of 10%. It is a fact that if you measure CPI exactly as it was measured in 1980, at the outset of our great debt inflation, it exceeds 10% versus the fake 3% reported without question by the MSM to a non-thinking public. A poor schmuck making the median salary of $25,000 who gets a 2% raise thinks he has $500 more to spend when in reality he has lost $2,000 of purchasing power. Federal Reserve created inflation is an insidious hidden tax that destroys the 99%, while enriching the 1%.

Until Debt Do Us Part

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

The recovery storyline being touted by the oligarchy of politicians, bankers and media is designed to make consumers feel better. This is a key part of their master plan. Any honest assessment of the financial disaster that struck in 2008 would conclude it was caused by too much debt peddled to too many people incapable of paying it back, too few banks having too much power, the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates too low for too long, and that same Federal Reserve doing too little regulating of the Too Big To Fail Wall Street mega-banks. I wonder what Albert Einstein would think about the “solutions” rolled out to fix our debt problem. Would he find it insane that total credit market debt has actually risen to an all-time high of $53.8 trillion, up $533 billion from the previous 2008 peak? Our leaders have added $6.1 trillion to our National Debt in the last four years, a mere 66% increase. This unprecedented level of borrowing certainly did not benefit the American people, as real GDP has risen by $96 billion, or 0.7%, over the last four years.

Would Einstein find it insane that the governing elite would encourage the 4 biggest banks, that were the main culprits in creating a worldwide financial collapse, to actually get bigger? The largest banks in the U.S. now control 72% of all the deposits in the country versus 68.5% in 2008. The Too Big To Fail are now Too Bigger To Fail. Rather than liquidating the bad debts, breaking up the insolvent banks, selling off the good assets to well run banks, firing the executives, and wiping out the shareholders & bondholders foolish enough to invest in these badly run casinos, the powers that be chose to protect their fellow .01% brethren and throw the 99% under the bus.

Ben Bernanke, in conjunction with Tim Geithner and his masters on Wall Street, implemented a zero interest rate policy designed to enrich the Wall Street banks, force investors into the stock market, and encourage Americans to borrow and spend like it was 2005 again. Rather than accepting that our economy has been warped for decades, with over-consumption utilizing debt as the driving force, and allowing a reset, the Federal Reserve insanely encouraging banks and consumers to do the same thing again. We do know Bernanke has stolen $450 billion of interest income going to savers and senior citizens and handed it to Jamie Dimon, Vikrim Pandit, Lloyd Blankfein and the rest of the Wall Street cabal. The “austerity is bad” storyline is pounded home on a daily basis by the politicians, corporate chieftains, Wall Street billionaires, and MSM pundits. The definition of austere is “practicing great self-denial”. Did you see the mob scenes on Black Friday? Americans are incapable of any self-denial, let alone great self-denial, and the masters of our country will not allow it to happen. One look at our GDP figures confirms the non-austerity occurring in this country. In 2007, prior to the collapse, consumer spending accounted for 69.7% of GDP. Today, consumer spending accounts for 71% of GDP, with investment accounting for 12.7% of GDP. In the good old days of 1979 prior to the epic debt bubble, when the financial industry do not run this country, consumer spending accounted for 62% of GDP and investment accounted for 19% of GDP. What an insane concept. You spend less than you make and save the difference. You then invest that money where you can get a reasonable return (.15% in a money market account is not exactly reasonable).

As Ludwig von Mises pointed out, a false boom created by credit expansion will ultimately collapse. We had the chance in 2008 – 2009 to voluntarily abandon the Wall Street induced credit expansion and allow our country to reset. The pain and misery would have been great, especially for the 1% who own most of the stocks, bonds and peddle the debt to the ignorant masses. As you can see in the chart below, the powers that be need debt per employed American to grow at an ever increasing rate to maintain their power and wealth. The miniscule reduction in debt from 2009 to 2011 was unacceptable. The governing powers will not be satisfied until von Mises’ final currency catastrophe is achieved.

Bernanke and his Wall Street puppet masters’ plan is actually quite simple. It’s essentially a confidence game. A confidence game (also known as a con, flim flam, gaffle, grift, hustle, scam, scheme, or swindle) is an attempt to defraud a group by gaining their confidence. The people who commit such tricks are often known as con men, con artists, or grifters. The con man often works with one or more accomplices called shills, who help manipulate the mark into accepting the con man’s plan. In a traditional confidence game, the mark is led to believe that he will be able to win money or some other prize by doing some task. The accomplices may pretend to be random strangers who have benefited from successfully performing the task. Bernanke and the 1% are the con men. They are attempting to defraud the 99% by convincing them their “solutions” will benefit them. The shills acting as accomplices are Wall Street bankers, bought off economists, politicians, journalists, and mainstream media pundits. You are the mark. The game has multiple facets but is based on more freely flowing low interest easy debt. The con man has reduced interest rates to zero at the behest of his puppet masters. The Wall Street accomplices offer enticing financing to the marks for big ticket items like automobiles, furniture and electronics. As the marks go further into debt, the Wall Street shills report record earnings ($26 billion from loan loss reserve accounting entries), consumer spending rises and GDP goes higher. The mainstream media accomplices dutifully report an improving economy. The government accomplices massage the employment and inflation data and declare a jobs recovery with no inflation. The marks are supposed to feel better about the future and spend even more borrowed money. This is what is considered a self-sustaining recovery by the psychopaths running this country.

All you have to do is open your daily paper to see the confidence game in full display. Last week the MSM reported another surge in automobile sales. Our beloved American automobile manufacturers are back baby!!! Automobile sales are now pacing above 14 million on an annual basis. This is up from the depths of the recession in 2009 when the annual rate was below 10 million. We’ve breached the Cash For Clunkers level and there is nowhere to go but up. The storyline is that Obama was right to save GM and Chrysler with your tax dollars. They are now making splendid vehicles (except for the exploding Chevy Volts) and employing millions of Americans. This is a true American comeback success story. Clint Eastwood should do a commercial about it.

There is one little problem with this storyline. It’s bullshit. Remember GMAC? You bailed them out when all their subprime auto and mortgage loans went bad in 2009. They have a brand new business plan. Change your name to Ally Bank and start making as many subprime auto loans as possible. You will be happy to know that according to Experian, 45% of all auto loans being made today are to subprime borrowers. What could possibly go wrong? In addition, the average loan term has grown to almost 6 years. Executives at Ally Financial said that subprime car lending had become “very attractive” because profit margins on the loans more than cover the cost of expected losses from borrowers who fail to repay what they owe. I’m sure they have everything completely under control. Gina Proia, a company spokeswoman, said the company places “greater emphasis on the higher end of the nonprime spectrum” and only lends to people who show they can pay. I can’t believe they are restricting their loans to only people who they think can pay. I’m surprised Obama isn’t condemning them for such restrictive loan terms. If you open your paper to the auto section you will see financing offers of $0 down-payment, and 0% interest for 7 years across the board on most models. But why buy, when you can lease a luxury automobile for $300 per month? It is simply amazing how many vehicles you can “sell” when “credit challenged” Americans can rent them for seven years. I wonder if this explains why I see dozens of $40,000 luxury autos parked in front of $25,000 dilapidated hovels during my daily commute through West Philadelphia. It also seems the Big Three are “selling” a few extra vehicles to their dealers in January as pointed out by Zero Hedge. No need to let a few facts get in the way of a feel good story.

• Ford month-end inventory 86-day supply at end of Jan. (492k vehicles) vs 60-day supply (466k) as of Dec. 31
• Chrysler had 83-day supply (349k units) end of Jan. vs 64-day (326k units) as of Dec. 31
• GM month-end inventory 89-day supply (619k units) vs 67-day supply (583k) Dec. 31

The facts prove the issuance of billions in easy credit is creating the illusion of recovery. Non- revolving (auto & student loans) consumer credit outstanding is now at an all-time high of $1.7 trillion. Even with billions in bad debt write-offs since 2009 the amount outstanding has risen by $100 billion. Does this sound like austerity is gripping the nation? The Federal government is dishing out student loans like candy, as hundreds of thousands of students get worthless degrees from for-profit diploma mills like the University of Phoenix and its ilk. By keeping them occupied in school, the government is able to keep them in the Not in the Labor Force category. Not to be outdone, our friends at GE Capital, Wells Fargo and the other too big to fail entities have been doing their part on the revolving credit side of the scam. I’ve recently been seeing an ad by the largest U.S. furniture retailer, Ashley Furniture, offering 0% interest with no payments for 7 years. I don’t know about you, but my kids destroy a couch in less than 7 years. Wells Fargo Credit doesn’t seem too worried. A critical thinker might ask, how can Wells Fargo possibly make money offering these terms? But there is the rub. Ben Bernanke is loaning Wells Fargo money at 0% so they can perpetuate the confidence game. These insane bankers truly believe they can kick start this moribund debt saturated economy by issuing billions more in debt to people incapable of repaying them. Einstein would be amused.

The McKinsey Group put out a report a couple weeks ago analyzing the amount of American household debt and optimistically concluding that it could be back on a sustainable path by 2013. Mike Shedlock pointed out that sustainable is in the eye of the beholder. It seems the bright fellows at McKinsey haven’t grasped the concept of regression to the mean. First of all their analysis is flawed because real disposable personal income is actually declining and Ben Bernanke’s master scam is working and Americans are now adding to their household debt. The little blue line has turned upwards since they gathered their data. Secondly, as Mish so accurately points out, the sustainable level of household debt is really at the levels prior to the debt bubble that began in the early 1980s. That is a debt level of approximately 70% of disposable personal income, as opposed to the current level of 110%.

The implications of household debt levels regressing to their long-term mean would be catastrophic to the 1%. Their kingdom of debt would come crashing down. Their power and wealth would be swept away. This is why it is so vital for them to create the illusion of recovery. Their confidence game is built upon an ever increasing flow of credit expansion. It will not work. There is no avoiding the final collapse of a boom created solely by credit expansion. Those in power will never voluntarily relinquish their grand game of pillaging the wealth of the nation, so economic collapse will be the ultimate result. They will continue to use propaganda, printing presses, and half-truths to further their agenda. But those who examine the facts will come to a logical conclusion that we are being sold a great lie.

“Half the truth is often a great lie.” – Benjamin Franklin

The Burning Platform

Normally, I do not make commentary on specific candidates for any office other than those candidates (of any political party), which support and uphold individual liberty and sound economic policy.  FedUpUSA in general is apolitical, since economics is based upon MATH, not politics.  However, as events are unfolding, I feel compelled to make the following statement:

Anyone considering voting for Romney had better watch this video.  Have we as Americans learned NOTHING in the past 5 years?!  How many times are we going to elect the SAME fascist oligarchs and expect a different outcome?!

If this happens, we deserve everything we get.  Romney is NOT better than Obama – in many ways he is far worse.  The only bright spot about a Romney nomination is that he will be at the helm when the Republican party goes the way of the Whigs and what remains of this country is destroyed.

For crying out loud, wake up America, you’re being herded like sheep to the candidate pre-chosen by those who already control our lives and this country – the same people who have eroded our liberties through discarding the US Constitution.  If you can’t figure this out, we apparently don’t deserve to be saved.

The Pampas of Argentina or the backwaters of Paraguay were the preferred location for those who openly professed their reprehensible loyalty to the Führer principle. However, do not blame all those ex-Nazis for selecting the shores of the Americas for their new domicile, their seeds were planted long ago in the offices of Wall and Broad Streets. Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will saga shares more, than what one wants to admit, about the dark side of American History.

From the beginning of the Republic, the Federalists conspired for the illegal passage of their central government constitution in order to form a competing world empire with their British cousins. Their leader was Alexander Hamilton, who championed making individual states subservient to the original crony capitalists. When the Father of our Country, George Washington admonished about the dangers on entangling alliances, the world was warned that the drive towards independent liberty was compromised under this new Federal system.

When Andrew Jackson rallied frontier populism against the establishment elites of his era, you had an opportunity to restore some of the former glory of the Revolution of 1776. The conflict over the abolishment of the National Bank symbolizes the eternal struggle that continues to this very day.

The Manifest Destiny of the U.S.-Mexican War demonstrated just how far the country strayed from the fundamental concept of independence from England. The expansionistic campaign had more in common with the Crown than the Boston Tea Party.

The early 19th century fascists looked to their next defender Abraham Lincoln, the lawyer for the railroad corporatist cabal and the worst of all despotic presidents, to complete the task.

Myth #1: Lincoln invaded the South to free the slaves.

Myth #2: Lincoln’s war “saved the Union.”

Myth #3: Lincoln championed equality and natural rights.

Myth #4: Lincoln was a defender of the Constitution.

Myth #5: Lincoln was a “great humanitarian” who had “malice toward none.”

Myth #6: War was necessary to end slavery.

The significance of the War of Northern Aggression is that the principle of independent sovereign states under the precepts of constitutional law died. With the prevention of secession, the liberty of a voluntary union was betrayed for the rule, under a loyalty oath, to an Amerikan Reich.

The next False Flag excuse was the Spanish-American War and the “Remember the Maine!” slogan that pushed the country into a “Pacific Imperium“. Those NeoCons, like Senator John McCain, who revere Theodore Roosevelt as a model for imperialist jingoism, draw their psychopathic lusts from the same bloodline as Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler.

World War I produced the infamous Woodrow Wilson internationalist treason. No longer will America be a society governed by elected representatives. The only coup to come out of his administration was won by the banksters. The fate of a proud people, sealed with the creation of the Federal Reserve, the establishment of the income tax and the permanent foreign military intervention abroad is the basis for the final destruction of the country and the horrors that befell our nation in the last century.

World War II inflicted the Franklin D. Roosevelt curse that guaranteed the imposition of socialism on the American people. How ironic that the Hitler bogyman’s regime, the scourge of Western Civilization and the reason for defending democracy, ultimately lead to similar collectivist policies, now adopted in the United States.

Just look to the ignominious involvement of Prescott Bush’s involvement with the funding of Adolph Hitler. Even FAUX news cannot hide the relationship in Bush’s Grandfather Directed Bank Tied to Man Who Funded Hitler.

“Prescott Bush was one of seven directors of Union Banking Corp., a New York investment bank owned by a bank controlled by the Thyssen family, according to recently declassified National Archives documents reviewed by The Associated Press.”

So what can and should a “reasonable man” conclude from these examples from history? The essential lesson is that the pristine fairy tale of the federal government’s noble role as defender of righteousness, that politicians want to accept and often die for, is a fictional myth.

Power politics always serves the interests of the banking elites, who control the political process, own the financial capital and manipulate the media viewpoint of events. This reality is pure fascism. You live under this system, so grow up, and admit it . . . it is the lamentable truth.

The Fourth Reich did not originate with Operation Overcast, the initiate name for Operation Paperclip. The classic book Fourth Reich of the Rich, by Des Griffin deserves another read.

“Some 150 years ago, in a speech at Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln acknowledged the fact that “no foreign power or combination of foreign powers could by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.”At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up from among us, it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die of suicide.”

Are we committing national suicide? Webster’s Dictionary (1828) defines suicide as: “Self murder; the act of designedly destroying one’s own life.” For that to be true on a national scale, the decisions leading up to our national self-destruction would, of necessity, have to be made by those who govern the country Congress, or “the government.”

Much of the German population was captivated by Hitler. The “presstitute” Goebbels’ media holds out Obama as a shining example. His manners are a composition of every tyranny to grace the scorched earth of despotic government. Will the America public come to their senses and make war against this Amerikana version of the Fourth Reich? You need not look for the Boys from Brazil to find today’s Nazi’s. They do their business in New York City, run their international institutes from London and order their bombing from Washington, DC.

Sieg heil! to the New World Order is the modern definition of national suicide.

SARTRE

“Sometimes the ‘people’ are right.”

Anonymous leader

******

“There are two kinds of outrage:

The anger of the disappointed spoiled;

The authentic moral wrath of the common people betrayed.”

Anonymous sage

Permit me to sketch some real-world political context.

America has evolved two cooperating political elites, each of which runs one of the two parties and shares three common traits: (1) high education levels, (2) important wealth (3) a distrust of the populist vote bordering on fear.  Winning elections for each requires a periodic courting ritual during which the populist vote (on which success depends) is earnestly sought, followed by a measure of post-election betrayal. Well before the 2008 credit-bubble crash and the advent of the Tea Party movement, I noticed the growing populist pressure.

“Populism in this usage represents the politically relevant precepts, attitudes and core positions that distinguish an enduring majority of adults from the political elites that depend on their approval.”

For decades, the corporate country club conservatives and the Lexus limousine liberals succeeded in achieving a rough division of the populist center: social populists on one side, economic populists on the other.

That situation was mutating well before the 2008 real estate credit bubble burst.  Just before that calamity, I wrote the following (in an analysis of developments in American populism):

“While I still believe that a legitimate populist movement can accommodate local custom (when popular sentiment clearly differs from the mainstream, thinking of the accommodations for gay marriage in Vermont for example), I also believe that there can be no accommodation for the anti-democratic reversal of the popular will in the rest of the country in this important area of life, especially by judicial fiat.  When judges, for example, abuse their trust by overriding the popular will, especially on essential ‘family values’ issues, a populist rebellion is virtually inevitable.

Politics is a game played among four players, each representing one mindset.

The game is about power, challenges to boundaries, and the reallocation of other people’s money & property.

1. For typical liberal minds, boundaries are obstacles to be eliminated, including the boundary between “mine” and “yours”.
2. For typical conservative minds, boundaries are bulwarks to be defended, including the boundary between “my kind of people” and the “unwashed”.

[Liberals and conservatives share a great deal more than they are willing to admit.]

1. For centrist minds, boundaries are threats to a delicate balance and boundary relaxations are always preferable to conflict.
2. The reasonable minds, the rarest of all, are equally wary of the toxicity of the ideologues and the weakness of many centrists whose tendency to conflict avoidance undercuts courage and principle when both are most needed.

People endowed with common sense agree that “extreme” ideologies[5] are harmful, yet many of them tend to ignore the extremism of the ideologues who claim to share the same general socio-political vision. But the difference is not just one of degree, as in intensity or passion. When actually adopted, all ideologies operate as powerful reality filters, screening out or distorting every inconvenient data set or challenging point of view that cannot be accommodated to the “correct” view. In a sinister operational sense, the extreme ideologies work like mind-worms, feeding on the vulnerable, substituting a secular catechism for critical thinking. The vulnerable groups include those closest to a particular ideology in the spectrum of belief, the rootless ones searching for “meaning and purpose” and all the post-modern thinkers who have abandoned their allegiance to the core moral order. They were Lenin’s “useful idiots”.  I like the term “unwitting prey” or even “pets”.

At this juncture in history, the most toxic ideologically saturated minds are still found among the progeny of the two malign ideologies of the last century:  Marxism and National Socialism. The beliefs of Lenin survive in the guise of bureaucratic egalitarianism and those of Hitler survive as population eugenics. The true believer ideologues[6] dance on a scary precipice, unaware of the yawning abyss, one foot-slip away.[7]  History taught in the classic manner, with fidelity to the past, sans ideological filters, is a powerful vaccine against the toxic infectious ideologies. We can hope that such classic history will once again be widely taught.

Each of the four archetypal mindsets (liberal, conservative, centrist and reasonable) is “onto something”. They are not ideologues – these mindsets are traditional styles of rational thought and communication. Each is a gift to us conveying some essential part of the big picture. Each has had its day and will again. No culture can afford to ignore or marginalize a single one of them, except at a steep cost, because each mindset is part of the civilized historical tradition.

No society without liberal, conservative and centrist minds – all of whom are in a mutual dialogue mediated by the reasonable minds – can avoid the “bubble trap”. The real world abhors a bubble.  Those who insist in living in one will eventually find themselves in an unchecked downward slide. The slope is steep and the momentum of the fall is constantly accelerating. The reasonable minds among us are the first to notice the pending disaster, but only an aroused population can stop it.

“Not my problem”, you say? No part of a human society falls over the precipice without taking others down with it. I believe that during times of great imbalance – like our present situation – we are in acute danger because the consequences of a major misstep will be unforgiving: We are permitted to briefly lose our balance, but we must quickly regain our footing or we will fall.  The precipice is always near, and it’s a very long way down.

Dialogue pierces bubbles and augments balance. At times like this, when political posturing and maneuvering trump dialogue, the abyss is much closer that we think.

About that Giant

Now, here is a secret. All this time a huge giant has been sleeping under our floor.

Go with the metaphor for a moment, and ask yourself: What would a dreaming giant dream?

HINT: The giant is us, the people, not the population, but that ancient virtual collective memory that holds the precious life lessons of our ancestors.  This is our giant, the keeper of our pains, joys, successes and failures – especially of our failures. The Sleeping Giant embodies our common wisdom, our common sense and our common morality.

When the players in the political game become too corrupt, too careless, too unbalanced and too arrogant, the center does not hold and things fall apart[8]. Eventually the noise from all those gnashing teeth awakens the Giant under the floor.  Meantime the Giant dreams of wisdom ignored.

Elites are typically out of touch. It is their nature, whether conservative, liberal or centrist.  They are disconnected by circumstance, out of touch almost by definition, and always distanced by the habits of comfortable neglect. In the Giant’s world, loyalty and trust trump ideology and one’s station in life – especially the ideological fads of the elites.  In the Giant’s world, loyalty and trust start with family and friends then radiate to neighborhoods, then to communities, and so on, ending at the borders of the country. Loyalty and trust are at the heart of the ancient moral code, the “Deep Torah[9] of humanity” if you will, the main precepts of which cannot forever be ignored by any people, including, especially, by the elites.

Our daily lives, the reality “on the ground”, shapes the alpha and omega of real life.  When we say that the elites are disconnected, this is what we mean they are disconnected from – and this is why they need to be watched at all times. But the common people are too busy living and struggling with daily life to keep up surveillance of the miscreant elites.

Among all the precepts and aphorisms of the ancient moral code, five themes sound in the Sleeping Giant’s dreams like thundering heartbeats:

1. Earning entitles one to keep its fruits – the harder the earning, the fiercer the keeping. This precept applies to all people regardless of their station. One does not initiate a general program of taking property from any group (i.e., without a fair individuated adjudication, such as reparations for theft) without threatening all groups. In the Giant’s world, the earnings of the common people the fruits of which are more precarious and therefore more precious, are to be carefully respected by the elites. Significant price inflation is a thinly disguised, elite-engendered theft of earnings.
2.  The common people and their children entitled to the same human dignity as the elites enjoy. In the Giant’s world, the common people must be every bit as well protected from predators (human, animal, institutional and inhuman) as are the elites and their children. For example, the specter of private security guards for the elites and underfunded, under-deployed police for the poor people is a violation of human dignity.  In the Giant’s world, the elites (who are functionally necessary, but not individually indispensable) will be “kept on” only so long as they honor the basic human dignity of the common people.
3.  Theft by a common person is stealing and should be punished. In the Giant’s world, there is no theft exemption for the elites. The “Deep Torah applies to all – ruler and ruled, powerful and powerless.  Yet theft by an elite person is sometimes a mere “resource reallocation”, until the crime is discovered, when it may be called “misappropriation.” In the Giant’s world, elites do not steal from the common people…even elected elites acting under color of law.
4.  Trust is the baseline commitment of the social order and individual relationships.  When elites disparage the family ties, the loyalty and trust relationships and arrangements of the common people, the foundation of general trust is damaged. Elites do not break trust with the common people nor publically undermine its value by disregarding it among themselves, except at their great peril. They do not debase the Deep Torah by adopting a separate moral standard for themselves.  Not without deeply angering the awakened Giant.
5.  Beware when the trust with the common people is finally broken: Then, even the most benevolent gestures of the elites become traps – hungry tigers are then considered safer company. In the Giant’s world, the elites do not trick the common people.

Our current elites include some very clever types who value their personal status over anything else.  Some of these clever ones actually fear the Giant, but they have a plan to lull it into sleep.  These elites have kept a subset of “the population” as pets.  These human pets enjoy a very limited capacity for independent thought and action, because they have been conditioned to dependency, and they live on highly filtered information[10].  These pets can be easily manipulated and even teased into a state of faux rebellion.  Occasional pet outbreaks are arranged or exploited[11] to create conditions that will allow the elites to reestablish themselves by changing costumes.

This is why mobs of noisome pets should not be confused with a Sleeping Giant Awakening.  Two distinct things must not be confused: The anger of the disappointed spoiled and the authentic moral wrath of the common people betrayed. Those unruly pets sleeping in tents in the public square are an intended distraction.  Moral outrage grounded in the Deep Torah will always trump ordinary discontent.

The awakened Giant is the real deal. But how can we tell the difference? How will we know when the Sleeping Giant has awakened?  Listen closely for a critical the voices cohering around five themes: (a) keeping earnings; (b) being kept safe from predators; (c) holding thieves accountable, no matter their status; (c) honoring trust relationships; (d) rejecting the falsely benevolent gestures. This is the growl of the “Deep Torah”. It is the authentic voice of the people that, when aroused, exhibits a sudden moral coherence and unmistakable power.

You may have noticed that the Giant is stirring. It may soon be fully awake. I leave it to the reader to decode the signs, both false and true.

Timing is everything.

A fully awakened, angry giant is a very blunt instrument indeed.  This is why populist rebellions tend not to end well, even for the common people who first cheered the “protesters”, only to discover, too late, that a new set of elites had been using them as unwitting foot soldiers all along.

There is a strategy for the survival of the good people and good institutions, the constitution of this Republic and the prospect of an American renewal during an Awakened Giant Event.

The strategy is grounded in five simple rules, easy to outline, but difficult to implement….

Rule One: The ideologues cannot be trusted.

Rule Two: Listen closely for the ancient moral message (see above).  The more quickly that message is heeded, the sooner the Giant will go back to sleep

Rule Three: When things go seriously awry, the voices of practical and moral authenticity will not diverge.  So beware those who are still trying to trick the people – even – or especially- in a “good cause.” Beware those who want to “break some eggs” to make an omelet when they really mean break some heads to make a revolution. And shun those who want to destroy human dignity and freedom to make “a better world”, because the really mean “a bigger kennel.”

Rule Four: The Sleeping Giant is us.

Rule Five:  Victory goes to the most self-disciplined, morally rooted (think deep Torah here) and determined candidates, parties and movements.

How awake are you?

Copyright © 2011 by Jay B Gaskill, Attorney at Law, All rights Reserved

Forwards and links are welcome.  For other permissions, contact the author via e-mail law@jaygaskill.com

The author is a California Attorney and the creator and administrator of The Policy Think Site www.jaygaskill.com and the linked blogs.

Kabuki financial theatre – Congress net worth up 15 percent from 2004 to 2010 while the average American sees their net worth decline by 8 percent in the same timeframe.  Welcome to plutocrat USA.

We truly have the best government money can buy.  From 2004 to 2010 members of Congress increased their median net worth by 15 percent while the average American saw it fall by 8 percent.  Yet this fall in net worth does little justice to the rising cost of food, energy, healthcare, and college expenses that have eaten away any iota of progress families try to achieve in a prosperous nation.  The fact that Congress presided over a Wall Street pilfering of the middle class and income inequality never seen in the history of the United States, we are starting to get a full understanding of what it is to live in a full-fledged plutocracy.  The reason people are frustrated with government is that it no longer looks out for their own interests and is narrowly focused on promoting the aggregation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

The rise of low wage capitalism

It is a fascinating exercise in consumer behavior that Americans are out spending in full force even if it is with other people’s money.  The economy is still in bad shape and those who were fortunate enough to land jobs in this recession are likely in employment that now pays much less.  Most of the jobs that were lost during the recession were higher paying jobs yet most of the jobs that have been added have come from the lower wage sectors:

Source:  NLEP

To sum up the above chart, over 5,000,000 mid-wage to high-wage jobs were lost yet less than 1,000,000 have been added since this recession supposedly ended in the summer of 2009.  Where does this leave most Americans?  It leaves them further and further behind while their elected officials continue to practice an ancient art of dog and pony show yet most Americans are waking up from the fog.  This is why there is so much fragmentation in the current political system.  The mainstream press is built on a clean and simple two party battle.  Ultimately this allows the system to continue to pilfer the majority and keep people as docile spending vehicles.  Yet that game is no longer holding up.

The cracks in the median income

The median household income in the United States is $50,000.  This figure has actually moved backward in the last decade while the cost of things like food, fuel, healthcare, and a college education have all soared.  In other words Americans are much poorer and many are realizing this.  Take for example the cost of fueling up a vehicle.  The days of $20 or $40 a barrel oil are long gone.  Remember when it was affordable to go to a state university?  The nostalgia is largely there because the pangs of a lighter wallet are real.

Read the rest at My Budget 360

Confidence in a systemically corrupt financial system cannot be restored without a complete public exposure of all the lies, fraud, misinformation and complicity.

The truth has a unique sting, and an equally unique ability to heal the destruction wrought by  dishonesty, fraud and lies.The truth hurts, because the daylight of truth demands changes  that the self-serving and those in denial desperately wish to avoid.

But there can be no healing or reconciliation without the truth, baldly stated and  plainly spoken without artifice or spin.

If we can finally be truthful with ourselves as a nation, then we must admit that our financial system is fundamentally based on lies, fraud, embezzlement, misinformation, perverse filters and incentives, shadow systems that mock transparency and regulation, class privilege and the systemic flouting of the rule of law.

This is the truth that hurts because it reveals the financial system as one stupendous exploitative fraud; but it also reveals the complicity and irrelevance of our judicial system and the complete capture of the legislative and Executive processes of governance.

There is a system of government in which rule of law is merely a propaganda screen, where financial and political Elites run the show and escape the consequences of their actions: it’s called tyranny.The truth is that we live in a financial tyranny.

There is no other truthful way to describe the U.S.

If you want evidence, then ask yourself:

How many people have been indicted, convicted and served time for financial crimes during the current era of financial fraud and malfeasance, the most pervasive in U.S. history?

Answer: essentially none; the number is signal noise.

Was the American public lied to about the need and true purpose of TARP and the  other bank bailouts?

Answer: yes.

Did Congress meekly cave into the demands to “save the banks” and swallow whole the most absurd threats, i.e. save our cronies lest anarchy become the order of the day?

Answer: yes.

Did the Federal Reserve backstop the banks to the tune of $7.7 trillion in complete secrecy?

Answer: yes.

Are there  two sets of laws and rules, one for the Financial and Political Elites, who are free from oversight and the rule of law, and another for the rest of us?

Answer: yes. Just look at the massive level of corruption and systemic fraud, and the near-zero number of investigations which result in indictments, convictions and prison time.

Has anything been done to change any of this systemically?

Answer: no. The Kleptocratic Power Elite likes the system as is.

This is the perfection of financial tyranny.

The Status Quo is anxious to “restore confidence” in their corrupt financial tyranny, but without confessing the corruption or naming names.In a system constructed of lies, then sweeping the lies under the carpet and acting like “everything’s fixed now, let’s move on” restores nothing–rather, it proves the system is a sham.

Nothing is fixed until the whole truth and nothing but the truth is revealed for all to see, in broad daylight.This is the origin of the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that have been established after a brutal tyranny has finally fallen, and the ruined nation seeks to heal itself from the misrule and exploitation of its Elites and from the officially sanctioned coverups of  systemic corruption and predation.

Quite frankly, the American system of justice is too far gone, too corrupted, too worm-eaten, to issue justice at this point.It would be nice if national resources were devoted to rooting out the fraud from 2001 on, but if nothing has been done to date except wrist-slap fines, then we cannot expect a thoroughly compromised and corrupted judiciary to suddenly transform itself into a judiciary worthy of democracy.

But we can demand a Truth Commission, where every one of the millions of people who committed fraud and who lied or mis-stated the truth can come forward and state the truth and name names, under oath.Everyone from the notaries who robo-signed foreclosures and home buyers who mis-stated their income and assets to obtain mortgages to the Wall Street apparatchiks who packaged the mortgages knowing they were fraudulent, the executives who looked the other way, to the politicos who accepted contributions from the engines of financial tyranny– give each and every one the chance to come forward and state the truth of their role in the system of fraud, collusion, avarice, lies and complicity.

Every single employee of Wall Street and the investment/mortgage banks and those Federal and State agencies tasked with their oversight should be called forth and given a chance to free themselves of the guilt of silence and self-serving complicity in a massively,  systemically corrupt system.Those who refuse the opportunity will be duly noted and their names entered in a public register of those who must have known some small sliver of the system but who have refused to tell the truth under oath.

The names of those who worked the machine revealed by their peers will also be publicly listed. If they think it unfair to be identified, then let them come forth and state the truth under oath. If they lie or mis-state the truth once again, then let them go to prison for  perjury.

If 10,000 citizens lie to protect themselves from the truth, then let us empty the prisons of  petty drug users and fill them with white-collar perjurors.

There is no other way to “restore confidence” but to insist that the truth finally matters. This will not be justice, but it will at least release the healing power of truth.

Charles Hugh Smith – Of Two Minds