European Sovereign Debt Levels to GDP Before and After the Bank Bailouts

What is even more clever than lining your pockets by ballooning the financial system into a great bubble by fraud and bad governance?

Getting the victims and bystanders to pay the price of your perfidy, and shifting the anger of the people to some unfortunates,  while 'reforming' the system to make it even more efficient at looting so that you can do it all over again.

No wonder that any movement that threatens the status quo in the least bit gets these white collared reivers and their pampered princes in such a lather.  It is important to make people think that no one else cares, and that they are alone.

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.

"The sudden explosion of European sovereign debt is the direct and indisputable result of all our political parties deciding they would safeguard their mates’ and their own personal wealth (it is the top 10% who hold the bulk of their wealth in the financial products which would be destroyed in a bank collapse. NOT the rest of us!) by bailing out the private banks and piling their unpaid debts on to the public purse.

So whatever the trigger of the next crisis may be, they know any solution which saves the wealth and power of the over-class will have to involve piling new, private-bank bad-debts on to already indebted sovereigns and that, our leaders must be keenly aware, will not be easy to force on an already angry public. They know a whole range of the assurances they might like to give us about what must be done when the next crisis hits and how those things will undoubtably save us, will not be so easy to shove down people’s throats...

I think one of the cleverest things the 1% have done over the last few years is the way they have created a relentless public discourse, via their paid political front-men and women and their media empires, to insist on the need to ‘fix’ and protect the system, and the extreme danger to us all should the system not be ‘saved’. This has served as a perfect cover for making sure that not enough people have noticed that the system is, in fact, being gutted and replaced by something that better serves the interests of the 1%. We have not been fixing the banks, we have been feeding them."

Golem XIV, The Next Crisis Part One

“Why do you think we have a winner?,” President Snow asks while cutting a white rose.
"What do you mean?,” Seneca asks.
“I mean, why do we have a winner?,” Snow repeats, before pausing. “Hope.”
“Hope?,” Seneca replies slightly bewildered.
“Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective, a lot of hope is dangerous,” Snow declares. “A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained. So, contain it.”

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

A Broken Economic System In One Picture

A truly bipartisan effort.

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation.

h/t Neil Irwin, You Can't Feed a Family GDP

Such a Parcel of Rogues In a Nation - Alba Gu Bràth

"For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom, for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."

Robert the Bruce, Declaration of Arbroath, 6 April 1320

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,

Fareweel our ancient glory;

Fareweel even to the Scottish name,

So famed in martial story!

Now Sark rins over Solway sands,

And Tweed rins to the ocean,

To mark where England's province stands—

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue

Thro' many warlike ages,

Is wrought now by a coward few,

For hireling traitor's wages.

The English steel we could disdain,

Secure in valour's station;

But English gold has been our bane—

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O, would or I had seen the day

That treason thus could sell us,

My auld grey head had lien in clay

Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!

But pith and power, till my last hour,

I'll mak this declaration:

We're bought and sold for English gold—

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Robert Burns, A Parcel of Rogues In a Nation, 1791

 

 

Is there for honest poverty

That hings his head, an' a' that?

The coward slave, we pass him by --

We dare be poor for a' that!

For a' that, an' a' that,

Our toils obscure, an' a' that,

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,

The man's the gowd for a' that.

What though on hamely fare we dine,

Wear hoddin grey, an' a' that?

Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine --

A man's a man for a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their tinsel show, an' a' that,

The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,

Is king o' men for a' that.

Ye see yon birkie ca'd 'a lord,'

Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that?

Tho' hundreds worship at his word,

He's but a cuif for a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

His ribband, star, an' a' that,

The man o' independent mind,

He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,

A marquis, duke, an' a' that!

But an honest man's aboon his might --

Guid faith, he mauna fa' that!

For a' that, an' a' that,

Their dignities, an' a' that,

The pith o' sense an' pride o' worth

Are higher rank than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,

As come it will for a' that,

That Sense and Worth, o'er a' the earth,

Shall bear the gree, an' a' that.

For a' that, an' a' that,

It's coming yet for a' that,

That Man to Man, the world o'er,

Shall brothers be for a' that.

Robert Burns, For a' That, 1795

Social Darwinism

"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel


"A culture that does not grasp the vital interplay between morality and power, which mistakes management techniques for wisdom, and fails to understand that the measure of a civilization is its compassion, not its speed or ability to consume, condemns itself to death.”

Chris Hedges


"In this way people are thrown aside as if they were trash."

Francis I

The Aktion T4 Programme provided the expertise, the administrative practices, and the bureaucratic rationales required to build the mass extermination facilities and the camps.

The beginning of social Darwinism is financial Darwinism, the unjust and willful allocation of means and opportunity.  This enriches the favored, and permits the oppressed to be more easily labeled as inferior, useless eaters, life unworthy of life. 

You may try to help them, but they are sub-human, and stubbornly beyond redemption.   It is a difficult task, but someone must do it.  As the superior few, we must do those hard things for the good of all. It is our destiny.  Thinning their ranks at a distance becomes easy to rationalize, and after a time a purely practical routine, like cutting the grass.

The root of it all is in the will to power, the desire of a select few to determine the value of all life, and to define both good and evil, with themselves as the ultimate good.  And their handiwork is not life, but a profound emptiness, the abomination of desolation.

They never have enough. Not enough money, not enough power, not enough killing. They cannot give life, so they will bring death.  They fear weakness and death, so they attempt to be its master. They would be as gods.  And in their pride they make themselves, and all those around them, not masters but monsters.