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As the old WW I ballad said, "I don't know where we're going, but we're on our way."
"Goodbye everybody I'm off to fight the foe
Uncle Sammy is calling me so I must go
Gee I'm feeling fine don't you wish that you were me?
For I'm sailing tomorrow over the deep blue sea.
And I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way
For I belong to the regulars I'm proud to say
And I'll do my duty night or day
I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way."
Boehner Pulls Out of Debt Talks - Economist's View
Although a complete failure is not likely, the drama queens, carnies, and thespians in Washington may take the budget deficit talks down to the wire to deeply impress the yokels and the locals of the seriousness of the situation, and be duly grateful that it is in the hands of major players.
Have you noticed a tendency amongst the pigmen to threaten dire consequences and annihilation whenever they are running a bluff and wish to get their way? These financial fellows and their minions have issued more threats and ultimatums in the last few years than al Qaeda.
While they are dancing on the edge of a precipice, it is possible that they could slip and fall. However, since no one in their right mind really wishes to see a default, except perhaps for a few delusional political opportunists and talk show Bonapartes, perhaps cooler heads will prevail. There are however, the ever present carrion feeders and sociopaths from Wall Street, who would benefit from any economic crisis, and would do so gladly no matter the pain endured by others.
Beside political campaign reform, it appears as though Washington is badly in need of adult supervision.
Have a pleasant weekend.
Markets were shocked when CAT came in light on earnings this morning despite posting a healthy 37 percent increase in revenue. The profit shortfall was attributed to "inflation in raw materials and labor." Of course there was no inflation in that revenue right? I wonder if they are having trouble hedging their forex exposure again.
Markets are coiling for moves which may be large based on the resolution of the US budget impasse, one way or the other.
I think it is theater, but it is not impossible that the players might accidentally stumble over a cliff. More likely the can will be kicked down road-wise, and both sides will claim victory, although the Dems will eat crow served up by that rascally Uncle Obama. How come he never betrays the money men? Oh, dumb question, never mind.
However, out of all this, I think a credible challenge to Obama is shaping up for the elections next year, and not from the extruded corporate man, Mitt Romney, or the banjo-playing daisy mae's Palin and Bachmann.
The fat cats were begging Chris Christie to run, but he knows he is over his head as it is and the skeletons in his closet might not survive national exposure. There is Perry of course, but that strawman needs a brain like Karl Rove to pull it off.
The O-Man talks a great game, and he might pull it off again, but this time he is burdened with a track record that does not match his words.
No I think we will see a dark horse candidate, maybe a third party or even a Democrat primary challenge, take Obama on. And he has no one to blame but himself. He will most likely cry all the way to the bank, following young Timmy to Wall Street in some capacity. I think he has blown his chance to be the greeter at Wynn's Las Vegas.
This interview was done in 1994, when Bill Clinton was promoting free trade and multinationalism, but had not yet made a deal with China to allow them to devalue their currency and then receive favored nation status.
You can decide for yourself, with the benefit of retrospect, the value of the arguments presented.
"Free trade" as defined by neo-liberal policies is a leveling tool that creates a few big winners and many more big losers, and reduces the middle class to the lowest common denominator of indentured servitude.
The goal of multinationalism is to destroy local government, choice, and sovereignty, through financial and military means. The will to power cuts across diverse forms of government, because of its attitude of the power of the few and the worth of the many. It defines what is 'human' to suit its needs of the moment.
The primary problem with unregulated trade, not considered within the context of overall social and public policy, is that it becomes a natural weapon for oligarchies and multinationals to use against local and regional government and public policy decisions, taxation, environmental laws, human rights. It is a major stepping stone to world government. There is a recurring movement among the powerful to bring the world under their control. It is the natural extension of their greed for power. There is never 'enough.' Sociopathic greed is a disease, and it sows the seeds of its own destruction. Always.
And this is why idealistic models of unregulated free market economics fall apart in practice, always.
Trade *could* be used to uplift the developing world, if it was accompanied by local reforms and progressive public policy, but in practice is most often used to create a huge social divide in the developed countries, and promote a return to a feudalistic political structure. Rather than uplift, it reduces the world to the least common denominator of quality of life and freedom.
One of the most significant problems is mercantilism, employed by oligarchic countries and multinational corporations, within the context of a fiat currency system wherein they are relatively free to short circuit all the market mechanisms that would prevent a few countries from creating enormous trade imbalances in a partnership with powerful elites and the privileged around the world.
Macro-economics has never been a pure science, but is often represented as such by those who are promoting theories that are purely political, cloaking them in false objectivity. Macro-economics is a social science, more like sociology than physics. In reality it is a subset of public policy discussions, highly slanted to ends and assumptions, attitudes and points of view about what is 'good' and valuable rather than what is a hard and replicable principles of nature, objectively true based on some endurable physical law.
So for example, if someone were to come out and say, "I think we should adopt the social structure of a nation and form of government your father spent much of their lives fighting and dying, where you give up most of your wealth and freedom to serve the powerful few who run the state," there would be a general uprising. But if the proposition is structured as the logical consequence of 'hard economic choices,' and a serious of crises, people can be led off the cliff, a few steps at a time.
"The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men."
Samuel Adams
If this trend continues, I would imagine the next step is civil unrest, and political crises that will be used to tighten the control over the public in the 'free countries,' and repress them for their own safety. We are seeing this now in the Anglo-American client states and unpopular dictatorships overseas.
Most men are easily fooled, entrapped by their emotions, easily herded by clever arguments and the dialectic of false enemies. It is only when they step back, and look at what is happening, who benefits and who is above the law, that they begin to realize the truth. But they will not do this for quite some time, because to do so is to admit that they have been fools.
How sad that the heirs to the 'greatest generation,' almost surely the most privileged generation in history, have in their excess become selfish, petty, and cruel.
The corollary of a few "Too Big To Fail" is that there are many individuals and small businesses who become "Too Small To Care" and then "Too Weak To Survive."
And so the weak and the undesirable are eliminated, first slowly and then with growing efficiency, for the good of the chosen few, the ubermensch, however a society chooses to define it.
Does this sound *conspiratorial* and outlandish? Check back in another ten years, and let me know how you and your children are doing. There was a budget surplus in the 1990's. And now the nation is throwing the middle class and the weak under the bus for the sake of the financial sector and the wealthy.
Once a single global currency is achieved, it is the end game for freedom for all but a few. Those who imagine that they are part of the few are all for this, although they are sadly mistaken. The few view them as useful idiots, disposable, and prey.
What the few themselves may not yet realize is that tyrants and empires tend, almost inevitably, to fall in disgrace, blinded and betrayed by the will to power, overcome by the love of freedom and the tide of history. So there is hope. But sometimes hope can become a distant memory, and freedom regained only by significant pain and loss of life, once you have released it from your grasp.
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.
Mohandas K. Gandhi
