American Democracy: Gateway Government to Oligarchy

American Democracy: Gateway Government to Oligarchy

 

When it came to financial markets in 2020, the most frequently asked question was why. Why, in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed some 1.7 million people worldwide and plunged the economy into the worst crisis since the Great Depression, did equity markets stage a historic rebound to reach new highs and become completely disconnected from reality?

 

The answer is much simpler and comes down to one number: $14 trillion. That’s the amount by which the aggregate money supply has increased this year in the U.S., China, euro zone, Japan and eight other developed economies. To put the surge in perspective, the jump to $94.8 trillion exceeds all other years in data going back to 2003 and blows away the previous record increase of $8.38 trillion in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

 

It’s also important to understand the mechanics. The place to start is with the central banks, which were instrumental in printing the money they needed to inject directly into the financial markets by purchasing bonds and other assets on a scale never seen before. As of Nov. 30, the collective balance sheet assets of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England stood at 54.3% of their countries’ total gross domestic product, up from about 36% at the end of 2019 and about 10% in 2008, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

 

-      Only One Number Mattered to Global Markets in 2020, Bloomberg

 

By Gregg Wall (10-30-2021)

 

Thank Goddess for Vivaldi and wine.  Thank Goddess for cloudless days, knockout blue skies, and the Canadian Rockies in the distance.  These types of days can be quite deceptive.  They make you feel - for a few moments - that all is right in the world.  There is hope… that the powerful can’t possibly mean to destroy the humanity living in this Eden in the name of greed.  That good governance and reform are within reach. 

 

Then one remembers that it was on a very similar day, a perfect day … on a beach on the South Shore of Massachussets, w/ my perfect son… that I learned of the planes that had ripped into the World Trade Center (two flew out of Boston Logan).  And you remember, there is fanatically obsessed, incomprehensible, evil in this world; and so, these beautiful days are a mirage, a veil, perhaps, to a better world. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Writing of unspeakable evil, we pivot naturally to America’s national debt… ever growing, ever skyrocketing, the thirty trillion-dollar monster in the corner of the room.  Debt accumulated bailing out the wealthy & Wall St., not once but twice (2008 and 2020), financing tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy & corporate welfare, and debt used to fund endless credit card wars.  

 

National debt that is always used as an excuse, by America’s wealthy & powerful, not to fund basic needs and social programs taken for granted by nearly every other Western democracy.  And so it is, as POTUS Biden retreats from his agenda and his promises to the American people.  In a complete twist of fate, this same debt is never given a moments thought when the GOP are in power, when billionaires and multinational demand more corporate welfare and tax cuts. It’s never given thought, when the annual omnibus spending measure is crammed through congress, w/out hesitation (preserving a failed status quo and massive welfare for billionaires & multinationals). 

 

The crushing debt is also used by the Federal Reserve to hold in place a failed low interest rate regime, that ensures the stock market flies ever higher, so that we see stocks like Tesla with a 364 P/E ratio (as of the close on Friday).  In the ultimate twist, the preponderance of the wealth is in the hands of a predatory few billionaires.  And so naturally, when these men refuse to pay taxes on that wealth… the debt spirals ever higher, the money supply grows larger, and it finds its way into markets and elite assets that escape the surly bonds of Earth. 

 

Odd, the debt – and resulting money supply - fuels a rising stock market, increasing the wealth of a handful of individuals (mostly white men) by some seventy percent, during a time of pandemic crisis, w/out these same men lifting a finger.  It’s all courtesty of the U.S. government and its policies, essentially adding up to a billionaire welfare state. 

 

An American child born into this world is indentured upon exit from the womb to the tune of $80,000.   All because a handful of men refuse to pay taxes on the excessive sums they received from an entirely captured U.S. government, from egregious tax policies, from a complete failure of economic stewardship by the U.S. government (which has allowed monopoly and globalization to become the standard), and via Federal Reserve policies that have made these persons incomprehensibly wealthy. 

 

America’s failed system of governance has so many structural impediments in favor of the wealthy, it’s little more than a gateway government to kleptocracy and oligarchy.

 

When the current gerontocracy exits power, it will be up to the young to write off this great evil – the national debt – which has been used w/out question to enrich a predatory few and to the complete detriment of the American people & sound government. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2021

Globalization takes a big hit…

Globalization takes a big hit… 

 

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde warned that the globalized nature of the euro area’s economy makes it highly vulnerable to systemic shocks from supply chain disruptions. 

 

“There are signs that the global economy could increasingly be a source of shocks for Europe rather than a stabilizer against volatility,”  Lagarde said. 

 

-       Just-in-Time Economy Becoming a Problem for Europe, Lagarde Says – Bloomberg

-        

By Gregg Wall (10-16-2021)

 

This was the week when many of neoliberalism’s problems, and its twin's, globalization, came home to roost. 

 

Neoliberalism is little more than laissez-faire, that is to say libertarianism in the extreme… where untrammeled markets rule, banks use free central bank money – not to lend – but create monopolies & cartels, and where billionaires are free to buy and purchase Western governments.  As for globalization, it’s the apex of neoliberalism applied to the global economy… where billionaires and monopolists use the global stage to conduct labor, regulatory, and tax arbitrage (essentially pitting nation state against nation state, in a race to the bottom).   Outsourcing, consolidations, crushing labor, the soulless commodification of all human endeavor, foreign supply chains, and just-in-time delivery are some of globalization’s hallmarks. 

 

While animal spirits and markets may have their place in individual sectors of the economy (especially in well-regulated businesses, with plenty of competition), as JMH has written on more than one occasion, the greed that defines neoliberalism and globalization is no way to run a democracy or a national economy. 

 

That became abundantly clear, again, this week, as supply-side inflation skyrocketed, and global supply chains continue to fall apart and are threatening economic recovery.   As Madame Legarde pointed out, I paraphrase, so much of human endeavor is now dependent upon monopolies and just-in-time delivery that if one or more points along the supply chain collapses, the entire system or economy has a very big problem.  Further aggravating inflation, tearing into consumer pockets, labor’s wages, and pushing the economy into recession? 

 

And the ECB’s head banker isn’t the only person who has noted the problem… President Biden also sounded off loudly this week on supply chains, bottlenecks to economic recovery, shortages, and inflation that, well, directly threatens his second term.  It appears that POTUS Biden and establishment Dems were counting on massive vaccine uptake and a reinvigorated U.S. economy to get them off the hook from fulfilling the president’s progressive campaign promises.  That’s speculation on my part (although it would explain endless delays in passing Biden's two-track infrastructure bills), but what isn’t in doubt is that globalization and neoliberalism – as means to rule an economy and government – are, again, an unmitigated disaster.  

Now, with the US recovery under threat, pictures of empty store shelves … just-in-time for the holidays…  and the economy struggling to create well-paying jobs, it’s all looking like a photo-op, and a massive Christmas gift, for the GOP. 

Here’s POTUS Biden:

 

Never again should our country and our economy be unable to make critical products we need because we don’t have access to materials to make that product.

Never again should we have to rely too heavily on one company or one country or one person in the world, particularly when countries don’t share our values when it comes to labor and environmental standards.

I’ve said before: We’re in comp- — we’re in the competition for the 21st century.  We are America.  We still have the most productive workers and the most innovative minds in the world.  But the rest of the world is closing in, and we risk losing our edge if we don’t step up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, Mr. Biden and his Senate colleagues would certainly know… many of the senate gerontocracy were around for much of the last forty years: letting Wall St blow up, not once but twice; allowed the US economy to metastasize into cartels and monopolies; authorized the export of the US economy and middle class offshore; and kowtowed to billionaires and corporate power with lickspittle adulation and blind devotion.  Ah, neoliberalism and globalization at its zenith. 

 

And after crushing U.S. labor all these many years, American workers are having a moment.  Walking off jobs, going on strike, and demanding better working conditions, benefits, and pay.  Long scorned and looked down upon with condescension -- by boardrooms, congress, and C-suites -- it turns out that the vast majority of American workers truly are essential.  But not so much billionaires, who now busy themselves with ego gratification and space races with Captain Kirk.  Thanks to the FED’s easy money policies – minting the exceptionally wealthy out of thin air, along with trillions in dollars – billionaires are a dime a dozen and entirely, nonessential.  Many no longer create anything, certainly not jobs or opportunity; but instead ride a speculative wave as the FED prints money, because the very same rich refuse to pay taxes (despite holding obscene amounts of wealth).  

 

My guess… the fun is just getting started.  Greed, globalization, neoliberalism – and the resulting corruption of the US government – will mean continued economic shocks.  Per the usual, the disenfranchised and the poor - nearly fifty percent of society - will pay the price.  Sadly, the Dems continue to burn up the legislative clock and do absolutely nothing to address fundamental structural defects, both economic & political…  let alone address and meet Biden’s commitments & obligations to the American people. 

 

All too common, America’s politicians make a great show of addressing the symptoms of the problem -- contrived, foreseeable, & manipulated shortages in supply -- instead of the disease itself: greed, globalization, & neoliberalism. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2021

Progressive Power Learns & Grows

Progressive Power Learns & Grows 

 

This isn’t some radical agenda — progressives are fighting for the President’s agenda, the Democratic agenda, the agenda people voted for. And we will deliver on it.

 

-       Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Twitter, October 2, 2021

 

By Gregg Wall (10-2-2020)

 

This might not have been as dramatic as the Women’s March on Versailles, but when the history books are written, the House Progressive Caucus’ rebellion against highly corrupt centrist Dems – this week – may prove to be a key turning point. 

 

On October 5, 1789, Parisian women -- faced with food scarcity, starving children, and escalating inflation over bread -- decided they had enough and marched upon Versailles.  This key event helped kickoff the French Revolution, and King Louis XVI and the Queen Consort of France, Marie Antionette, were marched back to Paris, never to return to their Pleasuredome. 

 

This week in America, the House Progressive Caucus, led by Representative Jayapal, decided that they had enough, and, w/ the nation facing food and fuel inflation, held their own rebellion.  The Progressive Caucus told House Speaker Pelosi they would not pass the corporate welfare package (aka the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill), without first passing POTUS Biden’s New Deal legislation (the $3.5 trillion Human Infrastructure bill).  The Progressive Caucus has not always been politically adroit, but having been burned many times before, finally took a hard line.

 

To be sure, the bipartisan infrastructure bill is not entirely bad; but the problem – as with all things bipartisan – is that it is corrupt, leans far more upon propping up a failed status quo, particularly in regards oil & gas energy, and is entirely inadequate for the times.  That is to say, the bipartisan bill doesn’t hold a candle to the real deal, the New Deal package President Biden ran and won upon (specifically, the aforementioned $3.5 trillion Human Infrastructure, reconciliation bill). 

 

With defeat at hand, POTUS Biden showed up on Capitol Hill and attempted to calm roiled legislative waters.  Biden reversed the House Speaker -- who attempted to shaft the American people, progressives, and the Biden agenda, by pushing through the bipartisan bill -- and the President made clear, the Human Infrastructure bill must be a part of the overall package. 

 

 

 

And speaking of history, this is the first President, since LBJ, that has attempted something on this order of magnitude.  Finally, stepping up for the American people, who have long faced: the tyranny of a very ugly oligarchy, billionaire rule, a highly corrupt congress, and neoliberalism & globalism that has completely annihilated the American middle class & worker.  Biden, indeed, knows his presidency is on the line; but more importantly, the pretense of American democracy, itself, is on the line (destitute as the institution is under a failed/purchased two-party system). 

 

In short, the defects and decay of a highly corrupt – corporate – political centrism lie smoldering upon the ash heap of history throughout the West.  See Germany’s defeat of the conservative, centrist CDU in Germany… and now, Greens are the kingmaker.  In Canada, progressive Liberals - and Mr. Trudeau - just won re-election, but only with the help of the leftist, progressive NDP.  And now, Progressives are flexing their muscle in the U.S. ... a direct reflection of neoliberalism's failure. 

 

But I digress.  Within America, the parallels to pre-revolutionary France don’t end with the Women’s March…  rising inflation and ever-increasing food costs were just part of the picture.  King Louis XVI had also deregulated bread and the profiteers & speculators made a killing, on the heels of poor harvests, at the expense of French citizens and economic stability.  Gee, sound familiar?  The monarch and his court were corrupt, completely full of themselves, and bumbling.  Not unlike the Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Supreme Court?  Mr. Louis had also driven his country deeply into debt, ironically enough, financing the American Revolution - just to stick it to the British. Today, America is deeply in debt, funding & financing empire, failed nation building, and endless war. 

 

History doesn’t always match up, entirely, with the present, but it is said to often rhyme. 

 

Vive la revolution !!!

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2021