The Walmart Syndrome

America is being sold out. The blue light special is not just for that coffee maker, 31” big screen HDTV, $7.00 slow cooker, or washed out denim jacket, but its ultimate purpose is to sell you out! Your wages will be placed on the shelf of CheapMart and sold off to the lowest bidder. The corporate elite want you to continue to buy their Chinese made cheaply made $10.00 wet/dry vacuums, or $20.00 power drill sets so they can bring down YOUR wages so you, too, can make those cheapie things, which would in return force your wages down to the bottom, even though you have an $800 plus home mortgage, $300 per month health care premium bill, along with your car payment, which you got for 0 down, 0 interest but $300 a month payment for 6 very long years. And then, there is YOUR credit card interest payment, if you still have a credit card and have credit—period—look at your interest payment. I won’t even go into your weekly grocery bill.

As you continue to over-buy your holiday gifts, you are bringing down your wages, your standard-of-living, and pumping your cash into the central bank of China boosting their enormous budget surplus, while your kids and grandkids will have to work-for-less in order to pay off the US budget deficit. Happy Holidays, Mr. and Ms. Consumer.

Keep feeding what it is you and your kids nag you to buy, instead of learning how to live with less.

The Teabaggers have been so busy resisting a government health care protection plan that would help cover them after their personal home drops into foreclosure and their lives fall into bankruptcy that they have forgotten to take their meds, which would control, or suppress their pervasive Walmart Syndrome that has infected their brains.

The Walmart Syndrome is a parasite that infects the brain, whereby knowledge and understanding becomes significantly impaired. It entered the United States virtually undetected by the CDC—Center for Disease Control, but has begun to affect many brains over the last 10 years. It turns the gray matter into fatty deposits, whereby the brain is unable to process sensible information because nerve pathways disappear and fail to allow for what is called an action potential---the ability for the nerve impulse to move down the nerve pathways for a functional and purposeful action.

What has happened is that U.S. corporations decided to shut down domestic operations, resulting in outsourcing, and the relocation of jobs over to China, and other low paying, and punitive-worker countries. In China, the U.S. corporations (we gullibly thought they were U.S. corporations) found new friends in China, which they embraced as investors. They called these new relationships multi-national US/Chinese corporations.

The U.S. corporation benefits from the generous legal system, which protects their patents, and copyrights, foreign national product dumping violations, as well as the generous tax system allowing write-offs, write-downs, deductions, and loopholes, as they abandon the American worker and U.S. economy for more lucrative returns.

China, a booming industrialized country, has pegged its currency to the dollar so their exports can sell in U.S. stores, such as Walmart, cheaper than domestically made products, what is left of them. Even though the Renminbi, (China’s currency) is artificially kept low, in spite of their booming economy and massive trade surplus, they, and their brothers-in-manufacturing-arms—U.S. multi-national corporations, like it is this way because the average working American, who is suffering greatly as a result of unemployment and underemployment because of job losses and plant closings, home foreclosures, debt payments, rising out-of-pocket health care costs, and stagnant or falling wages can buy the cheap Chinese/US corporate manufactured products.

Now, why do those hugely rich corporate ex-patriot executives love this arrangement? Well, after you and I buy the cheap Chinese stuff, those dollars head right back to China where their banks are flooded with U.S. greenbacks. What do they do with all our cash? The Chinese central banks buy U.S. Treasuries from the Federal Reserve Bank which monetizes those returned dollars to continue their zero percent lending practices to their broker dealers (mega-banks), who then use this cash to gamble at the Wall Street casino parlor increasing the stock prices of fortune 500 multi-national corporations stimulating others to join in on the scam. That means more bonuses, and higher executive salaries, as well as fattened business expense accounts. In addition, these mega-banks buy commodities manipulating the street prices, such as oil, gas, grains, etc. This enriches the corporate predator investment bank balance sheets, as well as the giving out of tens of billions of dollars in corporate bonuses. They also hand over billions in campaign contributions, through their 22,000 lobbyist brigades, to make sure that very little is done to interrupt their wealth-building machine.

Also, those Chinese central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and private equity funds jump into the Wall Street speculation and gambling game as the rich US/China industrialists and financiers push the stock prices higher and higher, in spite of the fact that the average American is slipping further and further down.

So, when the Teabaggers and others who head over to Walmart to buy some cheap stuff for the holidays, they are really rewarding those U.S. companies that sold-them-out. I guess it is like asking the neighborhood bully to come over for a free dinner, and then, inviting him to beat you up for dessert.

Now, do you feel better, yet?

P.S.—For those who need a reason to NOT spend their dollars at Walmart, here is a big one. Walmart does not screen or research the origination of their gold jewelry products. It has been stated that much of their gold product comes out of gold mines in the Congo, where women, and children are raped, abused, beaten and forced to endure horrible working conditions at gun point.

Thanks for reading, jerry

Fed Chairman Bernanke's November 2009 Speech at the Economic Club of New York

Watch Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's damning and dire economic forecast for our economy.


                                                       Watch here:



He is trying to put lipstick on our economic pig through his careful manipulation of facts. Here are a few quotes written by Mike Whitney in his article "The Great Stimulus Debate of '09: Crybabies need not apply", 11-20-09, Counterpunch.org.

"The flow of credit remains constrained,economic activity weak, and unemployment much too big. Future setbacks are possible...How the economy will evolve in 2010 and beyond is less certain...Access to credit remains strained for borrowers who are particularly dependent on banks and businesses. Bank lending has contracted sharply in year, and the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officers Opinion Survey sows that banks continue to tighten the terms on which they extend credit for most kinds of loans...Household debt has declined in crecent quarters of the first time since 1951. For their part, most small businesses have seen their bank credit lines reduced or eliminated, or they have been able to obtain credit only on significantly many of these businesses expected conditions to tighten further."

"The demand for credit also has fallen significantly...Because of weakened balance sheets, fewer potential borrowers are creditworthy, even if they are willing to take on more more debt. Also, write-downs of bad debt show up on bank balance sheets as reductions in credit outstanding. Nevertheless, it appears that, since the outbreak of the financial crisis, banks have tightened lending standards by more than would have been predicted by the decline in economic activity alone...Unfortunately, reduced bank lending may well slow the recovery by damping consumer spending, especially, on durable goods, and by restricting the ability of some firms to finance their operations."

"The best thing we can say about the labor market right now is that it may be getting worse more slowly."(End)

Bernanke says how 9 of 10 of the mega-banks have been able to fully meet their capital buffers, and recapitalize without the help from the treasury. Their equity has increased by $77B. But he failed to say it has been at the expense of the real economy, and accomplished by taking taxpayer funds to gamble on Wall Street at zero percent interest and, thus, are now able to hand out billions in bonuses.

He said decreases in bank lending will reduce consumer spending and business cash flows. In other words, as a result of the Fed's policies, businesses are dying because the banks that were recapitalized by the taxpayer cannot obtain credit lines in order to make payroll, and buy material. And, as workers lose their jobs, or find their hours cut back, they must be very careful how they spend their precious dollars.

Stress tests will lead the 19 banks to become fully capitalized for future lending. What crap. They are not lending to make any real difference in the economy.

He encourages banks to work with borrowers to restructure failing loans. So when do you think this will happen--Bennie?

He went on to say that over 8 million jobs have been lost in the private sector. He foresees declining work hours. He stated that the labor market will be getting worse, but more slowly. He went on to say that the "economic pain" among male workers between the ages of 25-54 are seeing their unemployment rate rise to 10.3%, and women in that age group to over 20.6%; Young people between the ages of 16-24 to be over 19%; and African-American youth to be 30%.

He said that weak income growth will decrease spending. Employers will shorten work weeks, and transition part-time workers to full-time workers before bringing on new hires. 100,000 new hires per month are needed in order to absorb new entrants into the labor force. Yet he failed to convey what has been predicted as a million and a half more workers finding themselves unemployed over the next 18 or so months.

He said that productivity growth is defined as output per hour of work and that productivity growth per hour has risen at around 5% annual rate this year. This is such crap!!! He failed to say that this growth rate has been mostly due to his Fed fund rates of zero percent interest to the top 10 bankstas so they could increase profits through their speculation and manipulation of Wall Street trades. Lipstick on a Pig, Bennie-the beard--Bernanke, Mr. Bank Crime Syndicate Field Marshall!

He careened against workers by saying that increasing productivity is what is left to improve business. So Bada Bing Bernanke, how will this be done without having to squeeze more juice from the already squeezed out worker? I guess, your double speak, between-the-lines gobbligook talk infers that more outsourcing, more cheap labor from China, Vietnam or Philippines is the way to increase business productivity.

It was truly clear from listening to this weapon of mass destruction that he MUST be fired, and the Fed MUST be nationalized and made transparent. This one man has killed America through his policies authorized by the board of the Federal Reserve.

As he concluded, he had the balls to say that he did not see any major misalignments in the economy. Whaddayathinkindude? The real economy is in shambles. Jobs are disappearing. China is coming over here to build manufacturing facilities. The US is becoming a third world country in many ways. The quality of life is diminishing for tens of millions of Americans. You, Mr. Field Marshall for the Financial Crime Syndicate have recapitalized your pals to such a degree that they can pass out $23 billion in bonus Happy Cash Meals. People are living in tents, in storm sewers, in their vehicles. Food banks and soup kitchens don't have enough food to go around. China continues to show a rising budget surplus, while they keep their currency pegged to collapsing dollar allowing them to sell their stuff cheap in the US.

And you, you bearded wildebeest from the Greenspan School of Failed Policy Studies, don't see a misalignment. Are just f**king stupid or the world's most evil, lying economist on the planet?

thanks for reading, jerry

God's Will Was In The Sachs

Wait. I am confused. Is it God Man Sachs? Is it Lord Blankfein? Is it a Fine Blank God Man In The Sach?

It is so hard to follow these days! We have Lloyd Blankfein, a key player in the financial-banking crime syndicate wanting all of us to believe that he believes in God, and that he is following God’s Plan. Lloyd Blankfein, the guy who has told us that his company, Goldman Sachs, really did not need to be bailed out to the tune of $12 billion by Little Boy Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, and Federal Reserve Chair, Ben Bernanke under the TARP give-away program.

No. No. He was just drinking from the public trough for humanitarian reasons. His colleagues and derivatives alchemists needed raises and bonuses, so if the Congress was giving out bail out candy favors called TARP (Toxic Asset Relief Program), then Blankfein was in line with his party bag.

It was in Blankfein’s theocratic master plan to be allowed to transform from a investment corporation into a bank company so he could be allowed to receive government handouts when he really did not need them.

It was God’s Will to have Blankfein attending the infamous March, 2004 secret meeting of the five investment crime family bosses with Bennie-The Beard—Bernanke, Timmie-The G—Geithner, Hank—The Paulie—Paulson to likely discuss knocking off Bear Stearns. It has all been denied that this was the intent. When asked about this secret meeting that would affect the entire economic fabric of the country, and which was kept from the President of the United States, Geithner, acting at the time as the New York Federal Reserve chairman said, ‘It was business-as-usual.’ It was just business. Just business. Ahh. Geithner channeling Tony Soprano.

So what was behind the Bear Hunt? It was rumored that in Blankfein’s theocratic master plan he had more than likely decided to attack da’ Bear by using a powerful killing tool---Naked Short-Selling. Many called it a counterfeiting scheme, such as Matt Taibbi, in his article titled “Wall Street’s Naked Swindle” (10-14-09).

Mr. Taibbi explains, “What naked short-sellers do is sell large quantities of stock they don’t actually have, flooding the market with ‘phantom’ shares that depress a company’s share price by making the shares less scarce and therefore less valuable.”

To paraphrase Mr. Taibbi, a giant number of undelivered shares over the course of a week (3-12-08) amounted to one of the most blatant cases of stock manipulation in Wall Street history. “There is not a doubt in my mind, not a single doubt” that naked short-selling helped destroy Bear, says Ken Kaufman, a Democrat from Delaware, who had introduced legislation to curb such financial fraud.”

The article went on to further describe the scam that goes along with naked short-selling tactics.

“Thanks to the media-fueled rumors and the mounting anxiety over the company’s ability to make its payments, Bear’s share price plummeted seven percent on March 13, [2008] to $57. It still had a ways to go for the mysterious short-seller to make a profit on his bet against the firm, but it was headed in the right direction. [There was this mysterious short-seller out to manipulate the stock price who knew what was going on inside Bear.] But then, early on the morning of Friday, March 14th, Bear’s CEO, Alan Schwartz, struck a deal with the Fed and JPMorgan to provide an emergency loan to keep the company’s doors open.” The stock price rallied to $62, but it was all pipedream. The hunt of da’ Bear was closing in. The Bear was cornered and the trigger was cocked. Here is how Mr. Taibbi describes it:

“The rally was proved short-lived—Bear ended the day [Friday] at $30—but it suggested that all was not lost. Then a strange thing happened. As Bear understood it, the emergency credit line that the Fed had arranged was originally supposed to last for 28 days. But that Friday, despite the rally, Geithner and then-Treasury secretary Hank Paulson—the former head of Goldman Sachs, one of the firms rumored to be shorting Bear—had a sudden change of heart. When the market closed for the weekend, Paulson called Schwartz and told him that the rescue timeline had to be accelerated. Paulson wouldn’t stay up another night worrying about Bear Stearns, he reportedly told Schwartz, Bear had until Sunday night to find a buyer or it could go fuck itself.” And, we all know how that story ended. It was God’s Will!

Goldman Sachs has reaped billions of dollars by engaging in short-selling.

Here is another intriguing part of Taibbi’s swindle story:

“A paper presented at the American Bankruptcy Institute earlier this year report[ed] that up to a third of all notes for mortgage-backed securities may have been “misplaced or lost”—meaning they’re backed by IOUs instead of actual mortgages.”

“How about bond? Naked short-selling of stocks is nothing compared to what goes on in the bond market, says Susan Trimbath, the former Depository Trust Company staffer. [She was one of the first people to notice that there was a scam brewing around naked short-selling.] Indeed, the practice of selling bonds without delivering them is so rampant it has even infected the market of U.S. Treasury notes. That’s right—Wall Street has actually been brazen enough to counterfeit the debt of the United States’ government right under the eyes of regulators, in the middle of a historic series of government bailouts! In fact, the amount of failed trades in Treasury bonds—the equivalent of “phantom” stocks—has doubled since 2007. In a single week last July, some $250 billion worth of U.S. Treasury bonds were sold and not delivered.”

“The counterfeit nature of our economy is troubling enough, given that financial power is concentrated in the hands of a few key players---300 white guys in Manhattan---as a former high-placed executive [put] it.”

We all know that Lloyd, or is it Lord Blankfein is part of that cabal. But remember, he is doing God’s Work!

Here are more of Lord Blankfein’s theocratic marching orders from you-know-who.

Phillip Davis wrote on Seekingalpha.com, a piece called “The Global Oil Scam”, 11-11-09, that Lord Blankfein’s Goldman Sachs was engaged in, with others, an oil scam the size of 50—Bernie Madoff swindles. $2.5 trillion in size.

Here it is. “Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, BP, Total, Shell, Deutche Bank, and Societe Generale founded the International Continental Exchange (ICE) in 2000. ICE is an online commodities and futures marketplace. It is outside the US and operates free from the constraints of US laws. The exchange was set up to facilitate “dark pool” trading in the commodities markets. Billions of dollars are being placed on oil futures contracts at the ICE, and the beauty of this scam is that they NEVER take delivery, per se. They just ratchet up the price with leveraged speculation using your TARP money. This year alone they ratcheted up the global cost of oil from $40 to $80 per barrel.”

There is more. “You can chart the damage done by Goldman Sachs and their gang of thieves by looking at commodity pricing pre and post ICE. Before ICE, commodities followed a more or less normal growth path that matched global GDP, and was always limited to price appreciation by the fact that, ultimately, someone had to take delivery of a physical commodity at a set price.

ICE threw that concept out the window and turned commodity trading into a speculative casino game where pricing was notional, and contracts could be sold by people who never produced a thing, to people who didn’t need the things that [had] not [been] produced. And, in just 5 years after commencing operations, Goldman Sachs and their partners managed to TRIPLE the price of commodities.”

Here is Lloyd Blankfein’s theocratic motivation. “Goldman Sachs Commodity Index funds accounted for $60 billion out of $100 billion of all formula-managed funds in 2007 and investors in the GSCI lost 15% in 2006, while Goldman had a record year. John Dizard, of the Financial Times, call[ed] this process “date rape” by Goldman Sachs…”

Mr. Phillips stated, “It is not surprising that a commodity scam would be the cornerstone of Goldman’s Sachs’ strategy.” “Before ICE, the average American family spent 7% of their income on food and fuel. Last year, that number topped 20%. That is 13% of the incomes of every man, woman and child in the United States of America, over $1T EVERY SINGLE YEAR, stolen through market manipulation.”

It is very clear to this writer, and no doubt to many others, that when Lloyd Blankfein says he is doing God’s Work, his theocratic master plan is to rip-off the American people, and United States government. His plan is to engage in fraud as a high ranking member of the financial-investment banking crime syndicate. It does not matter where in the world his evil ways are being manufactured, he always comes back to find a nice long straw to stick into the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing trough, supplied with taxpayer dollars, to suck out zero percent cash in order to perform his work for the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise the Lord!

Thanks for reading, jerry

PS:  Thank you Spectre Of Deflation, a great friend of the blogspot, for the great refresher regarding Goldman Sachs. Last year, 2008, Goldman Sachs received a gift from the heavens, or maybe it was just from the IRS and the US tax code. They were able to drop their tax burden down to 1% because of losses. How many of you folks working hard everyday were able to drop YOUR tax burdens? Not only has Goldman Sachs been receiving bailouts, and Federal Reserve Financial Happy Meals, but they don't have to pay taxes either!!! (Read the entire Bloomberg article in the comments below.)

“Keep Government Out Of My Medicare!”

I have written several opinion pieces on what I believe the Obama/Bernanke/Geithner short-term economic plan is for our floundering nation. I have stated that from my analysis Bennie-the beard-Bernanke, a major-general foot soldier for the financial crime syndicate, which has been gathering full-force momentum since the Reagan years, has their sights set on a further collapsing of the US dollar in hopes that it will fall and reach the bottom, called zero, so the masters of this economic Treasury theft can write-off their off-balance sheet toxic mortgage losses amounting to trillions of dollars at an incredibly deflated dollar value. It sure beats writing off losses at a higher dollar value. The destructive piece of this scenario is that wages will also be pushed further downward adding to more of the already 23 million housing foreclosures (held on and off the lender’s public radar), as well as higher under/unemployment numbers, which are inching up toward 20%, or Depression era heights.

It appears to be the idea of President Obama’s economic supply-side, trickle-down team that the only way to compete with the globe’s largest factory floor is to bring wages down to their levels. What Americans don’t realize is that the Chinese central government uses lower wages as their first line of defense when reducing production costs. China will never relent to another country outdoing their rock bottom labor/production costs, since their growth figures (approximately 9%) vitally depend on it. It appears that they would rather dump product onto the world’s market, than lose market share. Walmart, or what should be renamed Communist Chinamart, depends on it in order to expand throughout the world as the globe’s largest single retailer and employer.

What this current impotent president doesn’t realize, or maybe he does and won’t come clean to the public, is that the US cannot compete globally because over the last 30 years the corporate capitalist have decided to move the US manufacturing sector overseas outsourcing 7 million jobs eroding the standard-of-living and forcing working Americans into becoming debtors in order to support their lifestyles and families. Consumer debt had become a way-of-life, eventually forcing tens of millions into default and foreclosure as a result of attempting to magically create asset wealth through debt creation. It does not work. It failed, and now, the nation has been in the depths of the greatest economic forest fire since the Great Depression. We will not see the end of it anytime soon, or even in the distant future.

The 3.9% US economic growth is a fantasy, since it has been created out of US debt through the selling of Treasuries, attracting foreign central banks and investors into our debt clutches via the Federal Reserve’s quantative easing policy of freely printing money lavishing huge amounts of liquidity onto the mega investment banking syndicate. The nation is not growing, but actually “Spread Eagle across the pavement, while Jane and John Doe have put the squeeze on their own spending habits.

Another piece of this Obama-Bernanke-Geithner economic plan that is being down played is the carry trade. What has been happening is that with the Federal Reserve lending out to broker-dealers at zero percent interest, the borrowers go out into the world and find risky higher yielding and highly leveraged assets paying extremely desirable returns, and sticking the Fed’s zero percent cash into these investments, as they short the US dollar. As foreign investors buy US Treasuries, they fuel the US debt and Federal Reserve lending practices.

Dr. Nouriel Roubini stated in the Financial Times of London “Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust” (11-1-09) “They are borrowing at very negative interest rates—as low as negative 10 or 20 per cent annualized—as the fall in the US dollar leads to massive capital gains on shorting dollar positions”… “Every investor who plays this risky game looks like a genius—even if they are just riding a huge bubble financed by a large negative cost of borrowing—as the total returns have been in the 50-70 per cent range since March.”… “Yet, at the same time, the perceived riskiness of individual asset classes is declining as volatility is diminished due to the Fed’s policy of buying everything in sight—witness its proposed $1,800 billion [$1.8 trillion] purchase of Treasuries, mortgage-backed securities (bonds guaranteed by a government-sponsored enterprise [GSE] such as Fannie Mae) and agency debt. By effectively reducing the volatility of individual asset classes, making them behave the same way, there is now little diversification across markets—the VAR (value at risk) again looks low.”

Dr. Roubini went on to say, “So the combined effect of the Fed policy of a zero percent Fed funds rate, quantative easing and massive purchase[s] of long-term debt instruments is seemingly making the world safe—for now—for the mother of all carry trades and [the] mother of all highly leveraged global asset bubbles.”

Here is Dr. Roubini’s big point, “ But one day this bubble will burst leading to the biggest coordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate—as was seen in previous reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade—the leveraged carry-trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggered a coordinated collapse of all those risky assets—equities, commodities, emerging market assets classes and credit instruments.”

This detailed explanation clearly defines the probable outcome from the Fed’s reckless lending policies supported and encouraged by Team Obama.

As Team Obama has focused intently on rescuing the mega investment banking syndicate through extremely cheap liquidity in order to pad their balance sheets cushioning their eventual toxic write-off losses at the expense of the US dollar, their policies illustrate that as the dollar is shorted as it falls to the bottom, higher risk leveraging in equities and other assets will collapse once the dollar begins to climb as Bennie the Beard Bernanke realizes that the only way to pull foreign investors back into US Treasuries and bonds would be to raise interest rates.

The most absurd viewpoint by a slice of America is the determined efforts by the likes of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, and others to fight any sort of Public Health Care Option instead of getting damn angry over this massive theft of our economy and the destructive policies executed by Team Obama. I guess they have no objection to the financial sector’s $16.5 trillion in total debt as of the second quarter of 2009, which is equal to what they had accumulated in 2008. My question to all these 9-12ers is what will you do when you lose your health care? Where will you go? What will you do when someone dear to you in your household comes down with a very serious illness and you have no health insurance?

Congresswoman Bachmann said at her Tea Bagger anti-health care Washington, DC rally on 11-5-09, "Nothing scares members of Congress more than freedom-loving Americans." So, this is what Republicans believe is freedom—to work against the self-interests of gullible flag wavers. So, freedom means that when you lose your health care and there is no government plan to rescue you, you can foreclose on your house, willingly while singing America The Beautiful, and declare bankruptcy in order to escape from those massive and mounting medical bills. So, being a freedom-loving American is to allow the mega financial crime syndicate to get zero percent interest directly from the Federal Reserve to rebuild their balance sheets, while you have just seen half of your retirement savings vanish permanently as a result of those unregulated investment banks fabricating and pedaling smoke and mirror derivatives that were worthless, while, at the same time, making themselves trillions of dollars destroying what you have so tirelessly worked for. So, freedom-loving is to embrace the greedy US corporate capitalists who created this economic firestorm and gleefully pushed your wages down, while shipping your jobs overseas to China where wages don’t mean too much to employers, and their food and drugs are not as safely regulated, and a 40 hour work week is irrelevant, and their environment is much more polluted. I guess, to be a freedom-loving American allows one to be delusional, hypocritical, and stupid with a smile. So be it! Give your grandchildren a good-luck kiss as they apply for a low paying job.

We have had 7 million manufacturing jobs lost, $14 trillion of home equity and retirement assets disappear as a result of the economic firestorm, 23 million foreclosures, and a horrendous level of under/unemployment encroaching on 20% of Americans. We will see a lost generation of our college and non-college youth living in debt, and without jobs. Yet, the whack-jobbers protesting a Public Option ride buses to Washington, DC to rally against their own self-interests. Have they not read the Senate Congressional Budget Office report stating that this government administered plan would save $10 billion? That is the problem when one consumes huge amounts of mind altering Kool-Aid. The 9-12 protest movement appears to not have a real grasp of the nation’s problems because they lack understanding and drink from the propagandist’s poisoned wells.

It is about the jobs stupid! There is no recovery without them. Economic growth based on stock market gambling achieving big profits is not a recovery plan. The lack of a Marshall Plan to rebuild the manufacturing sectors and create sustainable jobs through a renewable energy policy, and the rebuilding of wages should be the battle cry among all working class citizens, and not the rescue of the blood-sucking investment banking predators, which are still close to drowning. But unfortunately, such an important message is being missed by a bunch of sign wavers wanting “Government Out Of My Medicare”.

thanks for reading, jerry

The Militarization Of Our Own Police

The G-20 in Pittsburgh, during September, was an eye-opener for many locals, as well as followers of the event. For the city of Pittsburgh, the disturbing takeover by police and military forces has since passed not unlike a go-around with a painful gallstone.

But the reality is that there are other locations around the country experiencing the impact of Martial Law exercises and their local police department’s spending government funds on brand new riot gear, armored assault vehicles, and other pieces of equipment designed for war and the occupation of a community, city or county. The terrorism industry has now taken hold in the United States. Even former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served under George W. Bush, has warned us of the potential to overspend on the anti-terrorism industry, or terrorism industry depending on how you look at it.

During an interview on Oklahoma television, while on a speaking tour, he told the reporter that the United States has many other very important ways to spend its money. He said that we must be careful to have balance in our national spending, and appropriate domestic funds on what is needed to be safe and nothing more.

Former President Eisenhower expressed a similar point during his term as president. As a former general, he warned the nation of the military industrial complex and the dangers of becoming too consumed with such a build up. Today, the United States spends one-third of it budget on the military industrial complex.

Maybe it was no surprise to the 1200 residents of Troy, Tennessee, on September 30, 2009, when 150 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 5th Battalion, 101st Aviation Regiment, and the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade out of nearby Fort Campbell conducted a full scale air assault training operation in preparation for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010. Maybe I am an alarmist, but after witnessing what Martial Law could look like, such training exercises that went on without concern in Troy could easily be exercises in the occupation of an American city, as well.

It appears that on the same date as the training in Troy, a small rural town with no police force, known as Hardin, Montana, was occupied by a private para-military force, which went under the name of the “American Police Force”. This private police force, with a Serbia-like logo attached to their black Mercedes SUVs, and commanded by an ex-felon, paraded around town scaring the bajeebers out of the local residents. One of the town officials had arranged for an un-contracted agreement with the APF before they decided to move into town and guard/ occupy an empty prison facility. In addition, they also decided to become the de-facto police force for this town.

It sure sounded like an old western movie when a band of bad boy cowboys take over a quiet, unassuming little one eyed place in the road trying to mind its own business. When the United States begins to see private para-military forces getting contracts on native soil, I believe we all need to take notice.

So, what is the fear? Why do local municipalities, counties, and cities have to request federal government funds to purchase equipment that would more likely be used in a militarized zone, or to combat terrorism? Is this nation hiding terrorists in Oakland, California, or Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, or in Marin County, California, or Sacramento, California, and need to be supplied with front line combat gear provided through the Department of Homeland Security? The HLS department has passed out $465.2 million in stimulus money for armor plated assault vehicles, LRAD machines, training exercises, gas masks, bomb-mitigation vehicles, surveillance devices, new digital radios, ammunition, a 44-foot fast-response boat with a kitchenette and mount capable of holding an M60 machine gun, Segway scooters for bomb squads, outfitted with all-terrain tires, oversized fenders, and trailer hitches, computer-aided dispatch equipment, hazmat response vehicles, surveillance gear, portable radios, respirators and much more stuff a lot of which will never be used and likely collect dust and turn into junk. Why?

Now we ask what is happening to America? It has entered into a new paradigm and it does not look good. There are tent cities popping up all over this country. People who were once homeowners and renters, with jobs, and spending money are now living in their cars, in storm sewers (Las Vegas), and empty buildings. There are now 1 in 50 school aged children living outside of a permanent home. Nearly 47 million Americans are uninsured, and it is projected that by next year there will be 52 million uninsured. And then, there are the 16-25 million underinsured. These people just might go bankrupt because of medical bills piling up, or because their health care provider refuses to pay. 62% of all bankruptcies were from those with health insurance. The Commonwealth Fund had reported that nearly two-thirds of US adults, around 116 million people, struggled to pay medical bills, or went without health care because it cost too much, or were uninsured for a time, or were just underinsured.

Are these the people that our law enforcement will use their new Homeland Security “toys” on once they get angry enough to protest their government’s Treasury theft? We all have to wonder, and, possibly worry, as well. As Pittburghers recently witnessed, these weapons were used upon citizens protesting just this economic theft and the G-20 nations, many of which were complicit in the economic principles called neo-liberalism.

This blogger has been writing about the $23 trillion transfer of Treasury wealth and monetized by the Federal Reserve to backstop the small handful of huge financial-banking institutions that caused this economic disaster resulting in nearly 20% of the under-unemployment of our work force, and losses of half of America’s retirement savings wealth, or $2T, because they engaged in securities fraud and fabricated derivatives with no real capital to support them. Yet they have been bailed out (over $3T), and now, were about to pay billions of dollars in bonuses to keep their fraudsters from moving on until those at MSNBC, such as Dylan Ratigan, got really, really mad about this economic theft by the financial-banking crime syndicate bosses and seemed to have woken up President Obama from his deep sleep regarding this massive disrespect of all hard working Americans.

Now, Michael Moore has just written in his list of ‘What Not To Do’ suggesting Americans get their money out of the hands of Wall Street and, especially, away from the largest investment banking syndicate bosses. He is now saying what this blogger was saying months ago. Get out of Wall Street and put your money in local, neighborhood banks.

This economic collapse could have saved the Treasury most of the bailout money and the backstopping monetization scheme by just buying up the collapsed Wall Street investment banks that came to Hank Paulson, Congress and LittleBoyBush, at the time. Their street worth was less than $300B. Had Congress said to them, either you go out and find your own bailout funding, or we buy you out based upon your real worth, which wasn’t much. But no. The oligarchs won out. They succeeded in the socialization of their losses and the privatization of the winnings. The congresspersons needed to bailout the bankstas, so they could get some of that back in the form of campaign contributions.

So what does this all mean? It means that these large investment banks are still sitting on trillions of dollars of toxic mortgage debt, which has thus far not been written off. Just listen to Professor Elizabeth Warren, chair of the TARP Oversight Committee, and she will explain it further. Basically, the banks have been allowed to steal government money in order to gamble on Wall Street fattening up their balance sheets for a time in the future, maybe next year, when the dollar will be devalued so much that all that toxic mortgage debt could easily been written off at its lowest nominal value allowing the bailed out investment banks to return to profitability at the expense of the taxpayers. When the dollar devalues to that point, wages will fall, as well. More foreclosures, and unemployment will likely occur, and corporations and businesses will fold. Empty commercial buildings will dot the landscape of our communities. Yet the investment banks will be saved!!!!

They will be hated, too. Americans might just get angry, and hit the streets in mass demonstrations. At that point, all the Homeland Security toys and their keepers will be out in force holding them back with all their might. The tanks, assault weapons and vehicles, police in riot gear, and more might be seen occupying more and more communities.

Paralleling this scenario might be the Federal Reserve raising interest rates on the bonds once the banks are saved because Bada Bing Bernanke might be finding that foreign central banks, and sovereign wealth funds dumping low return treasury bills and bonds as a result of the dollar’s value tanking to be just too scary. A raise in bond interest rates could trigger inflation even more, as the Fed would try and re-attract foreign currency buyers back into the dollar. With wages very low, and people struggling to stay solvent, inflation would empty their skinny wallets even more. And, without new jobs to come on line, foreclosures, and shrinking spending will be the norm.

We experienced collapsing consumer credit by $19B, in July. August added another $12B to that collapse. This turns into a 5.8% annual rate drop in consumer credit. Who can borrow? Who wants to borrow? As consumer credit tightens due to rising unemployment, there are fewer credit-worthy people available to take on the risk. This will further collapse the demand for credit and deepen the recession.

The dollar is being shed by foreign central banks. More nations are buying euros and yen, the highest percentage in any previous quarter.

President Obama has been perpetuating the myth that “a dollar of capital in a [huge bailed out Wall Street] bank can actually result in eight to ten dollars of loans to families and businesses. In order for the $1 trillion that the Fed has lavished on banks to produce a faster pace of economic growth, [an unprecedented number of] indebted households and businesses would have to take on an additional $8-10 trillion [of new] debt. Indebtedness would become a way of life. That seems to be the plan.” (Cockeyed Economics, Alan Nasser, October 9-11, 2009, Counterpunch.org)

The Average American household is too tapped out to even consider further indebtedness, especially since the banking oligarchs offered no “Shared Sacrifice” which President Obama has asked from all of us.

Found in the article “Cockeyed Economics” is the US Census Bureau’s Consumer Income Report of August 2008. It stated that real median household income was $50,233. Now for those households headed by married couples, have a median income of $72,785. If they own a home costing $169,000, it is very likely with all their yearly expenses, they have nearly zero savings at the end of a year. That means that with an unexpected expense or two or three, they have a zero balance at the end of the year. There is no savings. They might actually go negative. There would be no financial college support for their kids.

It appears that President Obama is stuck in a neo-liberal frame of mind. A form of laizzez-faire economic capitalism, which has shown to have failed and been the cause of this collapse. He actually seems to believe that by dropping wages resembling those of competing third world nations, the US will recreate the boom years of 1949-74. He does not seem to understand, as pointed out by Mr. Nasser, that it took decades to build a strong and vibrant, domestically consuming and exporting manufacturing sector. It has taken decades to destroy it. Therefore, it will take decades, again, to rebuild it into something viable. This is the Obama view of recovery.

What this means is further suffering Americans. A very eroded standard of living and our children never being able to have a life others had once joyfully experienced.

President Obama’s priorities are more with the financial-banking crime syndicate and making them fully solvent so they can once more sell wildly profitable exotic and toxic derivatives, which have basically dried up since the collapse of our economy, as well as perpetuate the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, than with those living and working on the corner of Main and Side Street.

It has been revealed that the fuel costs to America by just the U.S Marines in Afghanistan comes to $320 MILLION per DAY. That sure would buy a lot of recovery to working Americans. It costs the U.S Marines $400 per gallon of gas to fill their gas tanks. Is this what we need to be doing during this economic code red national security crisis?

It appears that the U.S government has armed the domestic police forces close to the level of what is found in combat theaters. Our government has militarized our neighborhood cops and is training them to see the public as a possible enemy. Why? Because the United States is devolving into a third world country. It is in decline in nearly every possible way. The corporate oligarchs have taken power by "over-lording" the White House, trying to control a great many congresspersons, and influencing the final outcome of our laws in order to suit their corporate agendas.

This is the new American Paradigm. And, this may be only the beginning. But we can do something to possible change the direction. One major directional change would be to pull all your money away from the hands of Wall Street, otherwise, they have it for their own use.

A new American Paradigm has been cooking in the crock-pot for 30 years, and now it has boiled over. The question is—what comes next?

thanks for reading, jerry