The Economy: "Currency Wars and Coups d'Etat"
"Currency Wars and Coups d'Etat"by Jesse
"I will not be surprised at all if in the next ten years certain US and UK officials, and those who claim that they were only acting on their government's behalf, merely following orders, become fugitives from justice. But there may be some 'suicides' and tragic airplane accidents among the weaker links first if things get dodgy. And of course the usual scapegoats, fall guys and patsies. This is not something involving the United States alone. Iceland is a microcosm of what happened as the systems were overtaken by corruption and greed, and is running ahead of the larger countries because of its smaller scale. The German banks are deep into it. The UK is more likely to follow Iceland's path before the US, and may serve as a bellwether. The neo-con David Cameron is certainly no man of the people, and is likely to make the working classes in Britain howl before he is done with them. England, what were you thinking?
The financial crisis is being used to cover a subversion of justice, what history may some day regard as essentially a financial coup d'etat, wherein a small group of men, many of whom have their roots and connections with a handful of universities, institutions, and investment banks, essentially seized control of the banking system, and by extension the economy, co-opting the media and the political process, and have been bending it increasingly to their will ever since.
What will most likely trip them up is not so much the acts of fraud and insider dealing themselves, but the overreaching, the cover ups, the subornation of perjury to the Congress, and as always, obstruction of justice. But before we reach that point, I would not discount a more overt attempt to seize or direct the power of government through some staged event, some false flag... But first and foremost they will use the softer means of deception, persuasion, intimidation, and of course the ridicule of anyone who questions their actions by their well paid demi-monde of analysts and commentators.
The oligarchs have almost ruined the US and the UK. They will now seek to subtly starve the middle and lower classes to pay for their piles of wealth which are largely pieces of paper, useless wagers, and will resist every effort to repeal the absolutely irresponsible tax cuts enacted during the administration of their chosen candidate G. W. Bush, and the setup to divert reform through their stalking horse, Barrack Obama.
They will speak out of both sides of their mouths. Unemployment insurance, Social Security benefits, healthcare, relief for the poor, and pensions are bad, and their unfortunate recipients lazy, stupid and an expendable drag on society. But the maintaining of ill gotten gains of the oligarchs, the enormous fortunes obtained through financial fraud, and paying little or no effective taxes on them through various loopholes, is a somehow a sacred requirement for economic recovery. And so we see how reform is floundering, and the smirks of the congressional chimps and pigmen are maintained even as the nations suffer the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.
There will be many 'useful idiots,' well outside the real circle of power but who consider themselves the well-to-do, that will agree with this injustice, and vehemently attack the unfortunate in society because of a combination of character flaws, usually selfishness, emotional immaturity, and just plain meanness. It is how it always is. Most Gestapo informants were actually neighbors, co-workers, bearing petty grudges and spites, not realizing the damage they were doing to real people. The coldness of the unenlightened human heart and the obtuse vanity of people in wishing suffering on others, with a kind of perverse self-righteousness, is sometimes a wonder to be hold.
As for the politicians and financiers, the oligarchs and those that surround them, I have tried to figure them out for a long time, often first hand. Some are just sociopaths, obsessively driven, as lacking in human feeling as the fellow who would shoot you in the face for your wallet. These white collar jokers have merely had better educational opportunities.
But as for the others, the many, I think that are just ordinary hard working people that over become so intellectually inbred that their viewpoint becomes like a clique, or a cult. They tend to be in positions where they can make or enforce the rules to suit themselves, and spend most of their time talking with others like them, with similar attitudes and feelings towards the world extensively influenced by their profession. They develop a feeling of isolation from the great bulk of humanity. Principles such as morality, right and wrong, cease to be relevant, without the common cultural context, for them. They become so preoccupied in the particularities of their own piece of game. They lose sight of the big picture. And sometimes this can lead to terrible abuses and excesses.
As an aside, I thought the recent essay from the fellow at the Fed who did not believe that anyone who does not have a PhD were imbeciles incapable of discussing or understanding economics was a good example. Did he understand how silly he sounded, writing from the very heart of a disgraced profession, and from an organization that under Greenspan and then Bernanke look like incompetent clowns lacking even common sense? I was actually embarrassed for him. Coming from the world of technology and big corporations I know the type.
A corporate culture can degenerate into a dangerously compelling institutional blindness, especially in organizations that like to bring their people in young and 'mold them.' Whenever I see clusters of resumes with the words 'Goldman' and 'Yale' or 'Harvard' in them cringe. The CIA used to favor Yale for recruiting, since it seemed to impart an outlook in its students that was amenable to spycraft. I do not know if that is still the case, whether universities tend to develop outlooks by their choice and development of students, but major corporations certainly do.
The US cannot obtain a sustained recovery without serious and significant financial reform and restructuring of its economy, and the legal repatriation of the wealth stolen by the financiers through fraud. What complicates this is that the politicians have allowed themselves to be tainted by the same brush of corruption, so in the short term everything is illusion, deception, and cover up. Slowly but surely, the truth will out. But the delay causes damage.
The bad debts will be liquidated. They cannot be repaid. Starving the common people alone will not work, and selling the sovereign assets will not be enough. Taxes would have to be raised to post WW II levels, along the lines of 70+% for the wealthy. How likely is this? The wealthy elite will promote the confiscation of pensions and Social Security first. These will be dangerous times, full of deception. Greed and fear will reach high emotional states.
Therefore default, albeit selective, is the rationale alternative, excepting the contrivance of yet another war to stimulate demand and encourage compliant behaviour. And that default will be accomplished through devaluation of the currency, the basis of all the debt, which is the Fed's note of zero duration. It will spread the pain throughout all holders of US debt, including those that do not vote. Bernanke and his economists know this. They will not admit it, because they are playing a confidence endgame with the people and with the holders of US sovereign debt, many of whom are foreign. The last thing they wish to cause is a panic. But at some point, there will be one, and it will not be pretty. The Democrats will attempt to kick that can down the road, delivering it to the successor to Obama, who is like to be a one term wonder 'unless something happens.'"
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