Monday, November 19, 2018

Pelosi & A Dem Agenda for Success...



Pelosi & A Dem Agenda for Success...


By J.M. Hamilton (11-18-2018)

Vancouver, British Columbia - 

This week we write about Dems, and their post-election blowout of all things Trumpian, and the Party's future (which does not include the Clintons, nor Ms. Pelosi, despite the yearnings of the economic & political elite).

For these are the very people, Clinton Inc. & Ms. Pelosi, who brought ruin upon the Democratic Party.  You remember: The Wilderness.  Under the Clintons, Obama and Pelosi:  The Tundra, the loss of governors' mansions, state assemblies, the US House and Senate, the White House, and most importantly, SCOTUS.  Siberian gulag, just to throw in one more metaphor.  

So when your grand kids see progressive programs struck down, and legislated against, by Trump SCOTUS appointees, 30 years from now... you'll know who to blame: the Clintons - a deux, Obama, and Pelosi.

Now my readers may recall that I went after Madam Hillary, truthfully, leading up to the 2016 election.  Read herehere, and here.  

The very things that the Clintons became, and Obama - largely - followed, exemplify everything Representative Pelosi stands for, in practice:  Oligarchy; GOP - Lite; unlimited campaign finance; government by multinational rule; K-Street; Wall Street bailouts w/ no conditions attached; Silicon Valley uber alles; the Swamp; Free Trade; the revolving door; and of course, the Deep State and an out of control MIC.  It's true.

Sure, the Clinton's, Obama, and Pelosi can shapeshift on a dime: expert politicians that talk a great game about the future and innovation, and reining in corruption, while shifting the Democratic party so far right that - on economic and foreign policy - it has become indistinguishable from the GOP.  They just never quite get around to doing the right thing.

The Democratic Party can thank POTUS Trump for being so obnoxious on social issues, and representative of what the GOP base has become - homophobic, misogynist & racist - for the 2018 win.  It sure wasn't because of the brilliance and shine of the minority leadership in the House & Senate.

Doubt me... think long and hard.  What were Nancy's two signature achievements, as House Majority Leader:  Wall... Street... bank... bailout.  Yes.  You got that one.  And the other, the House - under Pelosi's leadership - burned up the first two years of the Obama Presidency on the ACA (the Affordable Care Act).  The ACA turned out to be an abject failure, because to get that pig through the Congress, the Dems had to assure every healthcare monopoly, oligopoly, and special interest that the government would not use its power to contain & control their predatory pricing.  Trump is right, the ACA is a disaster; but of course, he reneged on his campaign commitment and hasn't offered anything better.

And speaking of Trump.... have you heard, it's adorable:  Trump loves Nancy.   

If that isn't the kiss of political death for Pelosi's speakership ambitions, what is?






So yes, Pelosi - like Hillary - is ambition defined.  There is absolutely nothing wrong w/ any woman, or man, being ambitious, but what does matter is how that ambition is channelled. Despite her highly recognizable failings, Ms. Pelosi wants the speakership in the worst way.  Here's a tip for Dems (some of it hashed out in the Politico piece above) ... don't nominate a replacement yet.  But vote Nancy down.  Then nominate a new Dem to the speakership... someone enlightened.  Bernie & Warren like, another female, young, the future.... I don't know, say:  Reps Ocasio-Cortez or Fudge?

Hopefully that'll drive the final nail in Nancy's political coffin, w/ only the ghost of her horrifying lust for power lurking through the corridors of Congress.

Speaking of which, Congress - again, under recent Republican & Dem leadership - has become a lapdog to the presidency.  Its constitutional prerogatives foregone, surrendered, nada.  The NY Times did a piece on the topic, as did ProPublica, largely buried in the news flow. Who benefits from a Congress that does not function?  If you answered, the financial elite, that is in fact, the correct answer.  Would a Speaker Pelosi - in 2019 -  pass an avalanche of progressive legislation, rein in the Deep/Surveillance State, initiate privacy rights for internet denizens, follow through on the Mueller report, pass serious campaign finance reform, pick up where the FBI failed on Judge Kavanaugh, expand & initiate antitrust legislation, and reclaim the War Powers Act and foreign policy?

Exceptionally doubtful.  Let's just be honest: NO. That's not how Congress works, now, and Ms. Pelosi's donors wouldn't appreciate that agenda.  And that's the bottom line, if the Dems think the strategy is to ride Trump's coattails to victory in 2020, while embracing the economic status quo - where the rich get richer and everyone else is scrod - then they are setting themselves up for failure all over again.

The reason why, ultimately, Nancy, HRC, Bill, and Obama were failures is America doesn't need two GOPs catering to the oligarchy and multinational set.

So be the party of the everywoman....  be the party of the everyman:  represent their interests, end war w/out end - showing support for US soldiers, support Trump on breaking up free trade agreements that benefited multinationals at the expense of American labor.   Americans - like the financial elite - are increasingly socialist.  They are not against entitlements like a free college education, healthcare, and they absolutely want to see the rich pay an appropriate share of the taxes, at similar tax rates that they face every day.  

It's why Trump's and Ryan's signature achievement - tax cuts for the rich - was a complete bust in 2018.  And like tax cuts for the rich, the majority of American don't like the idea of a Speaker Pelosi II; for the majority of Americans, the San Francisco congresswoman generates a negative impression, per the Economist.

Elect a true liberal for House Speaker, pass a flotilla of progressive legislation, and make the GOP led Senate turn down - or write off - Democratic initiatives for the people... let them.  They'll only be tying a noose around the neck of what remains of the Grand Old Party.  Dems need to demonstrate, unequivocally, that they are the party of the American people, and monopolies - in particular - be damned.   

FDR is a winner.  Senators Sanders and Warren are winners.  Senators Gillibrand & Harris - increasingly - looking like winners.  Why???... because they have, largely, eschewed corporate money.  

And Pelosi & Schumer have not.


Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018 

Sunday, November 4, 2018

Here today, gone tomorrow?


Here today, gone tomorrow?


On Tuesday, the chief executives of the world’s largest public companies will be receiving a letter from one of the most influential investors in the world. And what it says is likely to cause a firestorm in the corner offices of companies everywhere and a debate over social responsibility that stretches from Wall Street to Washington.

Laurence D. Fink, founder and chief executive of the investment firm BlackRock, is going to inform business leaders that their companies need to do more than make profits — they need to contribute to society as well if they want to receive the support of BlackRock.

Mr. Fink has the clout to make this kind of demand: His firm manages more than $6 trillion in investments through 401(k) plans, exchange-traded funds and mutual funds, making it the largest investor in the world, and he has an outsize influence on whether directors are voted on and off boards.

“Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose,” he wrote in a draft of the letter that was shared with me. “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.”


By J.M. Hamilton  (11-5-2018)

If the obituary for capitalism is ever written, among the key factors in its demise will likely be:  its complete moral collapse; concentrated – economic & political - power into too few hands (to the detriment of nation states & society as a whole); and an inability to provide an acceptable standard of living, enough well paying jobs, and opportunity for the majority of the globe’s citizens.

The idea that capitalism is at the crossroads, and possibly flirting with disaster, and certainly hanging w/ the wrong crowd, is not as far fetched as it sounds.  Empires thrive and wane.  Monarchies in the eighteen, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries were considered to be the foundation of good government – at least by the aristocracy – until they were consigned to the dustbin of history.  The Czar and his ministers, here one day and gone tomorrow, replaced by communists and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, until they too, were: here today, gone tomorrow (but not before becoming a military superpower w/ the aspirational objective of world domination).

It doesn’t seem inconceivable.  As JMH predicted, establishment political parties throughout the West have been falling like dominos, one after another… w/ the latest being, Brazil and Germany.  The centrist parties - based upon an economic foundation of neoliberalism & free trade (dictated by multinationals), and a political foundation of allowing the oligarchy/political patrons to loot governments, while insisting upon austerity for everyone else – have failed a great many citizens.  In fact, the majority.  The public has responded, and in doing their democratic duty, have turned out centrist parties that have bankrupted nation state, after nation state.  The public, in turn, and throughout the West, is looking for a new earthly messiah.  In many instances, that savior comes in the form of a strong man or woman, a right-wing authoritarian (who consistently, scapegoat migrants & minorities as the problem, when it's the economic system itself).  While in the recent German election w/in the state of Hesse, left of center Greens doubled their popular vote haul to 20%.  Populism comes in many stripes & flavors.

So if the West’s citizens are willing to overturn governments and centrist parties, who through gross fiscal mismanagement have racked up unsustainable amounts of nation state debt in favor of the oligarchs, and the resulting populist parties, ultimately, are not able to perform as expected, or become co-opted into the mainstream (i.e. become the next centrist parties) --- as the financial establishment/elites use national debt, and markets, as a means to defang & discredit populist parties --- it’s only a matter of time before citizens turn their attention to the puppet masters (a/k/a CEOs of multinationals, the financial elite, and the billionaire class), and demand economic & financial market reforms, if not outright socialism. 

Yes, many democracies have checks & balances established against the various branches of government, but where are the checks & balances against the obscene amounts of concentrated wealth w/in this Neo-Gilded Age?

Under the financialization of the economy – where banking, hedge fund, and private equity own nearly everything and dictate public policy through campaign contributions, dark money, and lobbyist  - we’ve seen, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the very worst of what capitalism has to offer.  Private equity, in particular, uses unseemly amounts of debt to front load profits, dodge paying taxes, eviscerate the middle and working classes, and burn the tax base and government with it.  All too often, PE shafts their bondholders & provides subpar returns to their shareholders, as well.  (The private equity biz model is so malevolent that Germany’s Spiegel magazine once likened its dark arts to a plague of locusts; the private equity model has become so ubiquitous – and requires so little thought – that it is now deployed as matter of corporate policy, even in publicly held companies, under the rubric of financial engineering.)  Once a corporation - and its bondholders -  have been looted by said private equity firm, there is nothing left, but a huge gaping hole, that cartels and monopolies are only too happy to fill. 

All forms of power, even economic, abhor a vacuum.






And so it is with the moral collapse of capitalism.  Google employees marching the streets over C-Suite sexual harassment, & protesting over DOD contracts and development of a censored search engine for Communist Red China; Senator Sanders extracting living wage concessions from Amazon (thwarting monopsony power); California initiatives and referendums taking political power back from oligarchy owned centralized/state government. The economic & political pressure is mounting, not merely to remove owned centrist political parties, but also to address the unseemly influence & power of the billionaire class.

In short the financial elite, increasingly, have a credibility problem.  For instance, how to square a dying planet in flames with the power elite’s inability to quit Big Oil (particularly when renewable technology is abundant & readily available)?  How does a sitting US President (from both political parties) rationalize selling billions in military weaponry to the most nefarious regime on the planet, so the Saudis can commit war crimes?  And how is it Wall Street, and national banks, blow up the global economy, contributing to the bankrupting of the federal government in the subsequent bailout process… only to continue, unabated, the greatest crime wave ever seen, since the 2008 crash?  (Such are the perils of placing one’s entire economy into the hands of monopolists… citizens, as well as political leadership, are basically at their mercy; such is the power of capital flows & capital strikes).

Meanwhile, despite low unemployment, wages stagnate in our monopoly/monopsony economy, which is just another coercive, and highly manipulative, form of wealth transfer.  Not only is the government rigged, but the private sector is even more rigged: against you, the consumer, and you, the employee.

Things are so bad, and the writing is so clearly on the wall, that none other than Blackrock’s CEO, Mr. Larry Fink, writes an epistle to CEOs telling them to clean up their act, and not only grow a social conscience, but to deliver.  Operating the world’s largest asset management firm, Mr. Fink certainly, has the power – the power of imprimatur & leverage – to push such an agenda with the companies and countries Blackrock invests in and services, respectively.  But as w/ many CEOs, the language & talk all too often dissipate and fall short of real actions.


Does Blackrock invest in the military industrial complex, which is so pervasive & powerful, that in no few instances, it drives US foreign policy decision making?  Often in ways that are unconscionable?  Yes.


Does Blackrock invest in job killing private equity firms, and provide capital to same?  Yes.

And the list could easily go on.

In short, there’s a sizable chasm between Mr. Fink’s words to his fellow CEOs and his, and Blackrock’s, actions.  

Fortunately, not all CEOs and entrepreneurs are the same.  Elon Musk, of Tesla fame, manufacturers planet soothing electric vehicles in defiance of Big Oil; and despite engaging, previously, with the Saudis about possible financing for taking Tesla private, Mr. Musk came out against Saudi financing last week. 

Reasons Mr. Musk may have considered in his Saudi decision: war atrocities in Yemen to serial human rights abuses w/in the Terror Kingdom; the selling of a genocidal petrol product; and the financing & spread of terror globally, all the way, to killing a Washington Post journalist (who merely had the audacity to write the truth about the Saudi monarchy).

Whether he was a recipient of Mr. Fink’s letter or not, Mr. Musk – whose skills & talents are considerable – seems to have chosen an ethical path.

Shame that Mr. Fink has not followed through in a more socially conscious manner.  The two business leaders then define the dichotomy found in capitalism today:  one leader – increasingly rare - is providing a highly innovative products array that challenges entrenched interests & the status quo, and presents evolutionary change for the betterment of mankind & planet; the other leader is still in bed w/ rent seeking ventures, dictatorships, the military industrial complex, and the most evil form of capitalism on the planet today, the private equity business model.

Capitalism will undoubtedly play some future role in the global economy.  This writer, however, fully anticipates that the predatory economic institution capitalism has become – one dominated/marred by cartels & monopolies, a debt explosion, the looting of governments, and financial engineering (all of which works at cross interests w/ the majority of the Earth’s citizens) - has a limited future.

The people are woke, and the blowback is just beginning, in ways both real and unimagined.

Crony capitalism, cartel & monopoly, and the private equity model, like the monarchs of old:  here today, gone tomorrow?


P.S.  Happy Guy Fawkes Day!


Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2018