Paul B. Farrell, "Kamikaze Capitalism: GOP Out to Destroy"
"Kamikaze Capitalism: GOP Out to Destroy"
by Paul B. Farrell, J.D., PhD.
"Foreign Policy’s journal is inspiring: Don’t miss their annual issue on “Failed States” listing the 25 worst dictators: “The Committee to Destroy the World.” Next, think domestic policy. Think of Mitch McConnell’s “Mission Impossible” vow to do anything, including kill our economic recovery for the next two years, anything to make Obama look bad, make him a one-term president. Call it Kamikaze Capitalism!
Go Mitch! You stir my cinematic imagination. Made it go into hyperdrive last week when your GOP team decided to defeat Reagan’s signature national security victory, the nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia. You guys sure have a bizarre suicidal idea of leadership and governing. Ol’ Grumpy Mitch also led his GOP saboteurs in killing the unemployment benefits extension, while making an even more bizarre claim that billionaires need an $800 billion bailout (that will trickle down to unemployed middle Americans?). Then he played his ace, calling the GM IPO a failure that should have been left to the bankruptcy courts, with more jobless millions. Yes folks, Ol’ Grumpy would definitely get on a domestic list like “The Committee to Destroy American Capitalism.”
Folks, this is the stuff of great movie plots. Not an Oliver Stone or Michael Moore film. No, this is a true Clint Eastwood thriller: “Absolute Power,” the story of an arrogant president thinking he is so untouchable as to get away with murder, only to be brought down. What if McConnell’s GOP gets their wish? Game on. The hunt begins. The GOP tried once before under Bush. Now they want a new shot at that old adage: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Yes, Sen. McConnell, the drama’s unfolding, powered by your vow that the GOP’s “No. 1 priority” is destroying the Obama presidency. Not creating jobs … not economic recovery … not even national security. And to do that, you’re trapped in a self-destructive paradox. Now you must destroy every single opportunity for an economic recovery, destroy everything that might make Obama look good. Destroy America. Destroy your GOP. In two years. Everything.
The GOP’s deadly obsession parallels Stephen Gandel’s description in Time magazine of Wall Street’s obsessive greed, grabbing personal wealth with no consideration of the collateral damage: A Wall Street trader’s “goal every minute of every day is to make money,” and “if running the economy off the cliff makes you money, you will do it, and you will do it every day of every week.” Warning to the GOP, if in the process of making Obama look bad you guys drive our economy off a cliff, you will pay a steep price in 2012.
Same old plot: Remember, Bush starred in the GOP’s last disaster: We know well the kind of absolute power Ol’ Grumpy wants. The same power his guys had for eight years under Bush, a failed presidency that drove America to the brink of total collapse with two costly wars and a disastrous Reaganomics. So how will this new plot unfold? Here are seven scenes in the worst-case scenario version to give this epic drama some historical context, both past and future.
This perspective became obvious while reading “Capitalism 4.0” by conservative Times of London columnist Anatole Kaletsky. He warns that America’s rapidly falling behind the new China’s capitalism: “Wherever I go in the world, governments and business leaders talk about the new Beijing consensus — the Chinese route to prosperity and power. The West must come up with a new model of capitalism that’s consistent with our political values. Either we reinvent ourselves or we will lose.”
Get it? America’s losing. And we better reinvent our Kamikaze Capitalism soon. Because the New Beijing Capitalism is winning the 21st century economic race, and we’re helping them beat us. Here’s the plot, here’s why, here’s where the GOP is going with this unfortunate “Absolute Power” sequel:
1. Adam Smith’s Pure Capitalism 1776 to 1929: For the first 150 years Adam Smith’s laissez-faire worked for our growing economy.
2. New Deal Keynesian Social Capitalism 1930s-1980s: Kaletsky calls this era “New Deal Keynesian Social Capitalism,” with government stimulating the economy after the Crash. Private enterprise failed. Capitalism’s bubble popped. Government primed the pump with jobs, money, credit, regulation. GOP hated it.
3. Reaganomics Disaster Capitalism 1980-2010: The Great Society triggered a conservative backlash. Economist Milton Friedman’s Disaster Capitalism attacked Social Security. His free-market ideology created the new Reaganomics, Fed boss Alan Greenspan, philosopher Ayn Rand, even Bill Clinton, all were part of an ideological conspiracy that deregulated Wall Street, led to today’s $670 trillion derivative trading casino and a global shadow banking system, the root cause of the 2008 meltdown. Now the GOP’s Reaganomics redux sets up a bigger catastrophe.
4. Obama’s revival of Social Capitalism 2008-2012: Friedman’s Disaster Capitalism peaked under Bush, adding trillions of new debt to pay for two costly wars, huge tax cuts and an increasingly privatized government. Today even Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman warns “his GOP has destroyed the American economy.” Yet, even as GOP bullies keep adding insult to injury telling the world that their No. 1 goal is destroying Obama’s presidency, the gutless Dems continue talking compromise, failing by refusing to stand on principle and fight dirty on GOP turf, using their weapons against them, in a ruthless political war.
5. Return of Kamikaze Reaganomics and GOP rulership 2012-2020: Soon the plot gets real thrilling because the GOP’s also aggressively undermining the recovery to embarrass Obama and destroy the American presidency. The GOP’s double bind is guaranteed to implode and self-destruct, tragically bringing down the GOP along with the presidency, the economy and the very nation they claim to govern. How so? Because, while the GOP is wasting America’s resources to destroy Obama’s presidency, the GOP is also strengthening a new, bigger threat … China.
6. New Beijing Capitalism (began under Bush in 2000): In his book “The End of the Free Market” Ian Bremmer warns of the rise of “state capitalism.” Nations manipulating markets. Sovereign corporations fronting for the political agendas of our enemies, destroying competition, making a mockery of free markets, while our politicians engage in petty domestic self-sabotaging games. Best example, China: In addition to currency manipulation, China controls 97% of the world’s rare-earth markets. But now this insatiable China is on a buying spree, tying up long-term commodity mining contracts and corporate equities across the world (with U.S. dollars). Worse, the New Beijing Consensus is rampant: China recently had western contractors competitively bid on and build the first phase of its high-speed rail system. Then China stole western rail technology, gave it to Chinese firms who are now underbidding western contractors … and they’re bankrolled with cheap reserves from China’s government-run banks, reserves accumulated while funding the Bush wars with Reaganomics Disaster Capitalism loans. And talk about wimps, Americans are now repeating the same self-defeating economic policies by sending other industries like heavy machinery to China.
7. Pentagon Capitalism: Military junta rules America after 2020: Twists in this “Absolute Power” sequel are now accelerating faster than China’s high-speed trains. Fiction merges into fact. Bush’s Pentagon warned that WWIII is coming sooner than we think. Most ignored it, but the GOP neocon warhawks love it. According to the Pentagon, by 2020 “as the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge ... warfare is defining human life.”
Yes, military generals will be ruling the American economy by 2020. Worse, this scenario is setting up an eventual confrontation with China, which, ironically, our antiquated GOP and it’s bizarre Kamikaze Capitalism is unwittingly building into our worst economic and military threat. So let’s all say a prayer that Eastwood’s message “absolute power corrupts absolutely” also applies to China leaders, otherwise we’re all in deep trouble that no president, no capitalism can ever fix."
1. Adam Smith’s Pure Capitalism 1776 to 1929: For the first 150 years Adam Smith’s laissez-faire worked for our growing economy.
2. New Deal Keynesian Social Capitalism 1930s-1980s: Kaletsky calls this era “New Deal Keynesian Social Capitalism,” with government stimulating the economy after the Crash. Private enterprise failed. Capitalism’s bubble popped. Government primed the pump with jobs, money, credit, regulation. GOP hated it.
3. Reaganomics Disaster Capitalism 1980-2010: The Great Society triggered a conservative backlash. Economist Milton Friedman’s Disaster Capitalism attacked Social Security. His free-market ideology created the new Reaganomics, Fed boss Alan Greenspan, philosopher Ayn Rand, even Bill Clinton, all were part of an ideological conspiracy that deregulated Wall Street, led to today’s $670 trillion derivative trading casino and a global shadow banking system, the root cause of the 2008 meltdown. Now the GOP’s Reaganomics redux sets up a bigger catastrophe.
4. Obama’s revival of Social Capitalism 2008-2012: Friedman’s Disaster Capitalism peaked under Bush, adding trillions of new debt to pay for two costly wars, huge tax cuts and an increasingly privatized government. Today even Reagan’s Budget Director David Stockman warns “his GOP has destroyed the American economy.” Yet, even as GOP bullies keep adding insult to injury telling the world that their No. 1 goal is destroying Obama’s presidency, the gutless Dems continue talking compromise, failing by refusing to stand on principle and fight dirty on GOP turf, using their weapons against them, in a ruthless political war.
5. Return of Kamikaze Reaganomics and GOP rulership 2012-2020: Soon the plot gets real thrilling because the GOP’s also aggressively undermining the recovery to embarrass Obama and destroy the American presidency. The GOP’s double bind is guaranteed to implode and self-destruct, tragically bringing down the GOP along with the presidency, the economy and the very nation they claim to govern. How so? Because, while the GOP is wasting America’s resources to destroy Obama’s presidency, the GOP is also strengthening a new, bigger threat … China.
6. New Beijing Capitalism (began under Bush in 2000): In his book “The End of the Free Market” Ian Bremmer warns of the rise of “state capitalism.” Nations manipulating markets. Sovereign corporations fronting for the political agendas of our enemies, destroying competition, making a mockery of free markets, while our politicians engage in petty domestic self-sabotaging games. Best example, China: In addition to currency manipulation, China controls 97% of the world’s rare-earth markets. But now this insatiable China is on a buying spree, tying up long-term commodity mining contracts and corporate equities across the world (with U.S. dollars). Worse, the New Beijing Consensus is rampant: China recently had western contractors competitively bid on and build the first phase of its high-speed rail system. Then China stole western rail technology, gave it to Chinese firms who are now underbidding western contractors … and they’re bankrolled with cheap reserves from China’s government-run banks, reserves accumulated while funding the Bush wars with Reaganomics Disaster Capitalism loans. And talk about wimps, Americans are now repeating the same self-defeating economic policies by sending other industries like heavy machinery to China.
7. Pentagon Capitalism: Military junta rules America after 2020: Twists in this “Absolute Power” sequel are now accelerating faster than China’s high-speed trains. Fiction merges into fact. Bush’s Pentagon warned that WWIII is coming sooner than we think. Most ignored it, but the GOP neocon warhawks love it. According to the Pentagon, by 2020 “as the planet’s carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge ... warfare is defining human life.”
Yes, military generals will be ruling the American economy by 2020. Worse, this scenario is setting up an eventual confrontation with China, which, ironically, our antiquated GOP and it’s bizarre Kamikaze Capitalism is unwittingly building into our worst economic and military threat. So let’s all say a prayer that Eastwood’s message “absolute power corrupts absolutely” also applies to China leaders, otherwise we’re all in deep trouble that no president, no capitalism can ever fix."
- http://www.marketwatch.com/
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