Karl Denninger, "Oh Really, Mr. Reptilian Republican?"

"Oh Really, Mr. Reptilian Republican?"

 by Karl Denninger

"Last night was a spooge-fest at the RNC; one of the more-common lies was Ryan's: “Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this  nation’s economic problems,” Ryan said. “And I’m going to level with you. We  don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can  do this.”

Oh really Paul? Paul Ryan, for those who have been living in a cave for the last couple of years, has put forward two separate "budgets" that are nothing more than mythical claims just as are Obama's Unicorn-laden promises.  The premise that we can somehow magically return to 5% GDP growth on a sequential basis for 30 years when the last 30 was all powered by debt expansion rather than production is a pure farce.

Never mind that an unbroken 30 year real expansion is fantasy-land material anyway; it presumes no recessions, no policy mistakes, no business cycles and no outside forces that might get in the way.  It is thus the sort of thing that only exists in the movies - or in Lyin' Ryan's mind.

The lies came especially-thick when it came to Medicare: “The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it,” he  said. “So our opponents can consider themselves on notice. In this election, on  this issue, the usual posturing on the left isn’t going to work.”

That would be nice but there was no promise to cage the medical industry - literally, behind bars, once they refuse to stop their monopolist behavior after the legal exemptions they enjoy today are removed.  Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - there was no promise to remove those exemptions either.

That's because Ryan and Romney won't remove them. See, Romney's litany is not that of Capitalism in the true sense - that is, innovating and proving through that innovation increased productivity and thus an improved standard of living.  Instead Romney is an utter expert in the abuse of leverage - loading up an entity with debt and taking his skim off the top then leaving someone else with the bill to be paid. In this he's a perfect match with the behavior of our Feral Government over the last 30 years, but unfortunately we're in the position as a nation of one of those over-indebted companies that is about to blow and Romney doesn't have time to add in more debt and take his skim first, as Bain did all too many times.

In simple mathematical terms there are two issues that define our budget problem - Medical Spending and Defense. We cannot simply dismantle defense and walk away, because if we do our oil supplies will be threatened or cut off, and without being energy independent first we risk catastrophic economic collapse. But we also cannot continue to pretend that Medicare and Medicaid can be "fixed" as government programs without dealing with the abusive monopolist practices of the medical industry, all of which would collapse in literal minutes due to the forces of competition without government laws to both protect the behavior and apply the boot to your neck as the health-care consumer.

Nobody on the left or right - or for that matter on the Libertarian side - will bring these issues into the political debate. Nobody. You haven't heard it from Obama, Romney or Gary Johnson but you can't get past the arithmetic. The "can-kicking" and lies told to the American public, the scaring of seniors and the use of the cudgel of government for the benefit of the skimmers and scammers in the medical, energy and defense industries is an outrage.

When you think of Solyndra, one of the naked scams of our time, you are seeing just the tip of the iceberg.  Just underneath the surface of the water are the reasons that having a baby in the hospital costs $10,000, when on an inflation adjusted basis from 1963 to today it should cost just over $1,000.

The Oklahoma Medical Center I wrote on recently is proof-positive of the size and mendacity of the distortions in the system today.  Prices that are 1/5th of the common charge found in the "we bury the cost of people with no money and then add a monstrous monopoly-driven profit" medical system are common, and that surgery center obviously is making a profit or it wouldn't exist!

Think about it folks - if you currently have so-called "health insurance" the reason you have it, and demand it from your employer (or from "Medicare") is that you believe you can't afford to simply pay cash for your medical care. The reason you can't afford to pay cash is that the medical industry has used its lobbying power to demand protections from government, enforced with government's guns, that allow them to screw you and everyone else, driving the cost you pay for a reasonable level of care to 500% of what it would be in a free market economic system for health services. That's theft and fraud and we simply can't afford it - the medical monster has been growing at more than 9% annually for three decades and at this point it is threatening to consume the entire federal budget and then the entire economy!  That obviously cannot happen but what can, and will happen is that our economy will collapse if this exponential growth is not stopped - here and now.

We as a nation and people either take this on here and now at the root level or we're done.  The entire world economic system is teetering on the precipice of too much leverage, too much debt, too much malinvestment and too many lies.  China is slowing down precipitously, Japan is slowing precipitously, Europe is on the edge of collapse and we're whistling while we saunter along with our nose turned up and our head held high as the DOW stands at 13,000, the S&P at 1,400 and Apple goes for over $670/share. Exactly as we did in 2006, sauntering madly toward the cliff of 2007 and 2008 ignoring the fact that the over-levered housing industry was crumbling right under our feet. Except this time it's not the housing industry.  It's government budgets at both state and Federal level, and not just here in the United States but world-wide.

Time is running out all right, but Romney/Ryan have no more vision or willingness to take this on than Obama - or Johnson - do. As such I hope you're ready for what's coming while you stare at the ass of an Elephant, Donkey, or those who are selling gay marriage and dope-smoking as the "face" of their candidacy when you consider who to "vote" for. And yeah, those are your so-called "choices."

- http://market-ticker.org/

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