America: The Land Of The Free Lords And The Indebted Serfs

The economy of the United States appears to have been divided into three parts, or “stimulus packages” that become clearer by the day. The most primary part is the financial-investment banking economy, or stimulus package, has been backstopped with nearly $13 trillion by the government. The financial stimulus recipients don’t have to ask for assistance when they are on the edge of bankruptcy. Government agents, such as former Treasury Secretary Hank “The Paulie” Paulson, current Treasury Secretary Timmie “The G” Geithner, and Federal Reserve chairman Bennie “The Beard” Bernanke all demanded that their financial crime syndicate bosses be thrown life preserves as their sinking investment banks were going down.

The next part of the economic stimulus is the War Profiteering-Pentagon-Homeland Security’s War on Terror economy. They drain over one-third from the yearly U.S. budget to fund private sector companies that are obviously unable to make a go of it in the private sector’s free marketplace. So, they are given lucrative contracts in order to enrich companies, such as Northrop-Grumman, Blackwater, Boeing, General Dynamics, GE, Halliburton, Bechtel, Custer Battles, BearingPoint, Exxon, Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, and a host more Treasury vampires feeding from the taxpayer’s cash troughs. These companies need the public sector, or one might say government “socialized” business contracts in order to satisfy their shareholders, pay bonuses, and fatten up business expenses. They don’t have to come ‘uh askin’ for the government’s socialized checks, they just answer the phone and write up the orders.

The third part of the economic stimulus economy is the most vulnerable. This is the real economy, which includes everyday working people packing up their lunch buckets, and filling their coffee thermoses as they head off to manufacturing and service jobs. Their goals are to create things, make things to sell in the export marketplace, as well as to sell domestically. They are asked by President Obama, “I want you to tell me what we (government) can do to bring back jobs.” The American worker has to come up with the ideas and plans to explain to the leader of the free world just what has to be done.

The workers that make real things that don’t go boom or poof in the night skies of our multi-billion dollar war zones have to go begging for lines-of-credit for their small business operations, since the gluttonous investment bankers would rather use the money they are “loaned” by the Federal Reserve at zero percent interest in Wall Street manipulative gambles, or in foreign currency speculation buys, or in commodities rather than expand lending to Main Street and Side Street in order to rebuild the crumbling economy of the United States after those very bankstas took it down slowly over the last 30 years, concluding with a full force gale of a collapse, with their fraudulent derivative and securities practices. They seem to forget that the cash they are loaned comes to them via the Treasury and taxpayer. But President Obama appears to like it just this way.

As Paul Craig Roberts wrote in “The Obama Puppet”,  “President Obama can promise health care to 50 million uninsured Americans, but he can’t override the veto of the war lobby and the insurance lobby. The war lobby says its war profits are more important than health care and that the country can’t afford both the “war on terror” and “socialized medicine.” “The insurance lobby says health care has to be provided by private health insurance; otherwise we can’t afford it.”

Dr. Roberts, former assist treasury secretary under Reagan, continued…”The war and insurance lobbies rattle their campaign contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, thereby “getting entitlements under control”.”

He went on to say that “Entitlements is a right-wing word used to cast aspersion on the few things that the government did, in the past, for citizens. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as “entitlements”. The right-wing goes on endlessly about Social Security and Medicare as if they were welfare give-aways to shiftless people who refuse to look after themselves, whereas in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged for the meager benefits with a 15% tax on wages and salaries.”

Mr. Paul Craig Roberts, Ph.D laid it out very clearly. There is a war against working Americans by the real entitlement class. The very people who have felt entitled to “steal” from Social Security by raiding it in order to demand tax cuts and expand the lucrative contracts by the war profiteers. President Obama, Congress, the Teabaggers, and the lapdog Blue Dog Democrats feel perfectly fine with the real entitlement class of those in the very top wage earning brackets feeding from the government’s socialized cash trough.

Fed Chairman Bennie “The Beard” Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee during his re-appointment testimony that he felt that Congress should make cuts in Medicare and Social Security in spite of the fact that the American worker is getting Pink Slipped, and real patriots, such as Dr. Elizabeth Warren, are loudly warning, while sounding the alarm bells that the middle class is on the brink of further disaster. The Beard calls for “Death To The Middle Class” while he hides those who he handed out zero percent cash loans to because he feels it is not his place to put the markets at risk, yet he is one who allowed the market players to collapse the real economy.

Dr. Elizabeth Warren has said, “One in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can’t make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings and has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.” (Dr. Elizabeth Warren, 12-2-09, Huffington Post)

Dr. Warren continued…”Families today spend less than a generation ago on food, clothing, furniture, appliances, and other flexible purchases—but it hasn’t been enough to save them. Today’s families have spent all their income, have spent all their savings, and have gone into debt to pay for college, to cover serious medical problems, and just to stay afloat a little while longer.”

As President Obama roams the brown fields of the once thriving manufacturing centers and passes by the empty factor buildings dotting Michigan, he has the gall to ask the unemployed and underemployed workers what would they want him to do. The truth is that President Obama has been told by the nation’s corporate oligarchs that they like things just the way they are.

For example, in Chicago, the president of the construction trades union is considering helping bail out a sunken developer with around $26 million in pension funds to finish his abandoned hole-in-the-ground surrounded by a chain linked fence. This skyscraper was planned to be the tallest building in Chicago, but went bust. It has gotten to the point where workers have to pay for their own jobs, while the bankstas sit fat and happy on huge piles of taxpayer funds. They don’t care if the finished building goes bankrupt trying to pay for itself just as long as workers pay for their own jobs.

The United States is turning into the land of free lords and the indebted serfs.

China pumps all their stimulus monies into manufacturing of exportable products, which can be also used domestically, yet the United States believes that Afghanistan needs around $200 billion more cash injections.

I don’t hear China’s president asking his people how to make their economic engine run faster. They have high speed rail to do that. We have Amtrak. China is building solar manufacturing plants in Pennsylvania, while President Obama is still asking what needs to be done after 12 months of being called ‘Mr. President’, and 2 years of campaigning,. Japan will be importing to their US Nissan dealerships a 100 mile ranged electric car (LEAF) for the masses in the next 12 months, which will take 4-8 hours to recharge when plugged in to your own outlet, and approximately 30 minutes at a quick charge station. But President Obama is still holding job summits, and giving speeches.

10% of the American workforce is in manufacturing. 17% of our GDP comes from manufacturing. What needs to happen, Mr. President is very simple. I believe a kindergartener could tell you what you should do. It is not rocket science. Simply stated all you do is beef up the manufacturing engine in this country. You tell the financial crime syndicate that the free ride is over and it is time they pay back all that they borrowed, with interest. You demand that the Federal Reserve gets audited so we can call in all the loans that Bennie the Beard passed out.

Next, you create a National Rebuilding Initiative, or something like that, by funding manufacturing jobs. Instead of workers sitting idle collecting unemployment benefits, you pay employers to hire workers to make things that will pull the nation forward, such as solar panels, wind generators, geo-thermal systems, electric vehicles, upgraded power grids, high speed rails, energy efficient products of all types, as well as things that will continue to allow America function. You demand that mortgage issuers cut mortgages that are underwater, but still being paid on, to street level values, and then reduce the interest rates. It is time that these bankstas eat some of their toxic garbage, and repair the damage they are responsible for creating.

Next, all workers get health care. As you put people back to work with a National Rebuilding Initiative Project by paying employers to hire workers at minimum wage, they get health care to boot. By putting America to work, workers learn new job skills, they sharpen existing job skills, which makes them more enticing to private sector employers. Taxes get paid. The GDP goes up. The trade deficit goes down. The nation becomes more self-sufficient. Workers become credit-worthy, once again, and banks begin to lend as they are supposed to. Also, you and Congress put limits on how big big-box stores can be and empower communities to refuse their intrusion into their communities. You strengthen communities so, once again, they become self-contained livable centers of life. While you are at it, give tax incentives for family farms, and place a tax on agribusiness conglomerates in order to rebuild family farms.

Regulate the investment-banking syndicate, and do away with too-big-to-fail.

Mr. Marshall Auerback, a Fellow at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, with 28 years experience in the investment management and global portfolio strategy business, is a person who has expanded upon such ideas. (12-2-09, An Interview with Marshall Auerback, Mike Whitney, Counterpunch.org)

Mr. President, we are all waiting for the Change We Can Believe In, and the Yes We Can you promised. American cannot wait any longer; and, you know it, too!


Thanks for reading, Jerry


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