The Fourth Annual Neoliberal Darwin Awards
WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed an $858 billion defense policy bill that would rescind the Pentagon’s mandate that troops receive the coronavirus vaccine, pushing past the objections of the Biden administration as lawmakers in both parties united behind another huge increase in military spending.
- House Passes $858 Billion Defense Bill Repealing Vaccine Mandate for Troops – NY Times
By Gregg Wall (12-23-2022)
My readers by now are familiar that I use this annual column to write about companies and executives who have epically failed to provide goods and services for humanity… indeed, in the name of shareholder value & self-enrichment, have gone out of their way to harm consumers and treat humanity & labor with great contempt. And trust me, there was no shortage of targets to write about this year, be they executives, owners, or entire industries. It seems that COVID and global calamites - like the climate crisis – have done absolutely nothing to cause humanity and leadership to pull up, take stock, and recognize the path we are clearly headed down is a most unhappy one.
This year, however, seemed somewhat different. It was a great year for recognizing, witnessing, and examining great macroeconomic trends. And this year, the year of our lord 2022, was munificent in that regard. Therefore, we dedicate this column to some of the great Darwinian macroeconomic trends, observed in 2022. So walk with me and let’s look at some of the great economic & political trends.
I felt badly in recent months that so many of the parties in leadership conducting, doing, saying horrible things have been women in power. I’m far more used to attacking my own kind - the privileged white male - who are and remain responsible for hell’s amount of evil, going back centuries and millennium. But apparently, the price of admission to power in the West, for the current crop of female leaders, is to exceed & outdo their male counterparts in avarice, corruption, and genuflecting to economic power, kleptocracy, and a failed status quo. I believe, it’s called identity politics. Please don’t misunderstand me, we need far more women, minorities and LGBTQ2S in positions of power… but with that, we need real, very real acknowledgement, that the manner in which we have done things – in the U.S. specifically, our economic and foreign policies - has been an abject failure (or more simply put, no longer serves humanity or this planet we are so privileged to exist upon).
And enter Liz Truss, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain and the second coming of PM Margaret Thatcher, or so she had hoped. Former PM Truss will forever be in my pantheon of heroes for accidently bringing about the beginning of the end of Thatcherism, supply-side economics, and trickle-down tax theories. With Tory leaders failing frequently & often in the U.K., PM Truss came to power on the heels of Boris Johnson. Truss promised to reverse course and double-down on Thatcherism with large tax cuts for the rich, donors, businesses, and friends (coupled with austerity, shrinking the state and public services, at the same time Britons were feeling quite abused by four decades of the Thatcher economy and Etonian elites). But ironically enough, it wasn’t center-left politicians or the public that brought PM Truss down; but the very markets, financial mavens, banking, and shadow banking entities that had thrived for decades under failed supply-side and trickle-down economics (as Great Britain’s national debt soared to pay for all that plutocratic welfare). The FOREX markets, and arguably, the Bank of England toppled PM Truss, as the pound crashed.
A key difference between Thatcher and Truss was national debt to GDP ratios of roughly 40 to 45% in 1979, versus just over 100% in 2021. That and forty odd years of tax cuts for the rich, laissez-faire, City of London and bank bailouts, and the robbing of the public and public services to pay for the transfer of wealth (aka socialism) to a predatory elite. And now, the country has erupted into strikes as inflation and consumer price gouging soar. As for PM Truss (aka Maggie Thatcher 2), she lasted all of 45 days.
If some of this seems highly familiar with what is going on in the United States, the parallels and economic decadence and debauchery, for a predatory few, are very much aligned. Soaring national debt, the looting of the state by the rich, a tax code only Warren Buffett could love, the collapse of Reaganomics (Thatcher’s evil twin)… yes, it’s the nightmare that keeps on giving, along with a highly, highly corrupt United States government (and a failed political duopoly). Which, perhaps, brings us to the next great macro-trend, politicians who acknowledge problems, make promises to address problems or say they are addressing a problem, and then, do little or nothing about it. I know, I know, this is not unique to 2022. But President Biden and his recent acknowledgements that monopolies and trickle-down economics are a huge problem, also goes along with the readily apparent collapse of neoliberalism, supply-side economics, and anything goes (aka laissez-faire) for the billionaire elite.
And if we are totally honest, it’s also in keeping with that other self-regulatory failure, GFANZ, Wall St., and the private sector. The trio that is going to save us all from perdition, a planet in distress, a planet on the verge of collapse.
Further reinforcing these macro themes, was the collapse of crypto in 2022. You know that fabulous libertarian solution to central banks and money printing. Crypto … with absolutely nothing supporting it or tethering it to reality… but celebrity endorsements, love and appreciation from members of congress, and the corporate titans that piled in. All that, and of course, fraud. As Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange, FTX, went down in flames.
Nearly lost in the smoke and rubble of Thatcherism and Reaganomics -- and forty years of the Greed Based International Order -- was the abject insanity of the United States going to war with a nuclear power, Russia. Casting aside logic, intelligence, reason, and the MAD doctrine… and facing, potentially, global nuclear annihilation… America decided to back the most corrupt nation in Europe (whose 'Dear Leader' suspended press freedoms and any political opposition, presumably in the furtherance of democracy). With no national security interests whatsoever in the Ukraine, why is U.S. leadership toying with & stroking, what Freud would call, our collective death wish?
Perhaps we can find the answer to that question in the 859-billion-dollar defense bill, presently sailing through congress. With ungodly sums of pork for defense contractors -- more than the G10, combined -- the epitome of a greed, hubris, and kickbacks, as U.S. child poverty soars again.
The elite’s priorities seem really, really screwed up.
I’m not always a fan of markets, especially rigged markets, particularly as some sort of North Star or moral or pragmatic compass for running the world. But when humanity & markets signal Reaganomics, supply-side economics, trickle-down, crypto scams, and the accompanying catastrophic debt are a big, big problem… just maybe, it’s time to listen and bag forty years of greed, before greed bags all of us and the planet so many of us deeply adore.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022
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