Exorbitant Privilege

Exorbitant Privilege 

 

"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." 

 

-       Stein’s Law, Herbert Stein, Counsel of Economic Advisers (Serving Presidents Nixon and Ford)

 

By Gregg Wall (5-13-2023)

 

It’s that magical time in the political cycle where the two far-right political parties, Dems and GOP, pretend to care deeply about America’s national debt.  The fact that both parties spend like drunken sailors, when in power, and that both parties are responsible for running up the national debt, notwithstanding. Worse still, the fact that America is in the middle of yet another Wall St. banking crisis, also appears completely underreported & under analyzed by the MSM talking heads & members of congress.  (But that money printing, that debt run up to bailout Wall St, yet again, is perfectly okay).  Another Wall St crisis spawned by America’s preeminent failed ideologies: deregulation, laissez-faire, neoliberalism, and let Wall St and billionaire sociopaths do as they damn well please. 

 

Because if we truly believed the neoliberal, supply-side, trickle-down lies, the public was fed from the ‘80s forward…. There’d be no national debt.  Right?  

 

To be sure, like everything in Washington, the debt ceiling is all a choreographed stunt. The two-parties will strike a deal at the 11^th hour, the Republicans will be able to say that they exacted spending cuts, the Dems will be able to say they protected the sanctity of the dollar and America pays its debts; and of course, per the usual, the American people will bear the brunt of the spending cuts. 

 

As for the billionaire welfare state, the deep state, the aforementioned failed economic ideologies, and complete lack of accountability & systemic corruption in Washington… all that will remain untouched.  Which, conveniently enough, sets America up for the next debt crisis down the road. 

 

Left entirely out of the debt ceiling analysis & discussion is how does a country like the United States manage to run up $35 trillion plus in national debt to begin with?  Amazing how the root causes of American malaise never get addressed by the elite sociopaths, the Wall St and Washington brain trust, and the MSM. 

 

To answer that question, we go directly to America’s exorbitant privilege, which is a pretty phrase to describe the American dollar as the reserve currency to the world, and America’s seeming ability to print money ad nauseum without repercussion.  That is, until – as observed by economist Herbert Stein, the system no longer works – the currency breaks down, the world loses faith, and the dollar is toppled (as happened to the British pound, post-World War Two).  Like America today, the British were deeply, deeply in debt when they lost the reserve currency.

 

But I digress, back to exorbitant privilege, the debt ceiling, and America’s catastrophic national debt.  What has America received for its national debt, for $35 trillion in credit card spending?   

 

We have possibly the worst medical system in the developed world, where Americans pay double, per capita (vis-à-vis most other Western nations); and yet, in America, medical costs are the leading cause of bankruptcy, forty percent of Americans can’t afford a doctor’s visit, and life expectancy is dropping. Here, blame rests squarely on our for-profit healthcare system.  America can’t afford it.  Here, blame the oligarchy exorbitant privilege has created and bought off politicians, who are all too willing to do multinational bidding. 

 

With the rise of catastrophic debt, backed by exorbitant privilege, the nation's money & wealth have been transferred to a rising number of billionaires, multinationals, and multi-millionaires… who is turn use their wealth to corrupt and subvert federal & state governments.  There isn’t a branch of government, facet, or body of policies and laws that have not been entirely corrupted by this massive wealth transfer.  Thank exorbitant privilege for endemic American corruption, and it’s only growing like cancer.  It's quite simple.  As wealth is transferred and accumulated by the rich, they refuse to pay taxes, more debt and money are created, which fuels asset classes of the rich (as interest rates are suppressed to keep debt service levels manageable and assets are further aggregated, leveraged, and backstopped by the taxpayer, see Fed put)... feeding a monetary doom loop.  (By the way, this is exactly why both parties are frauds.  If they ever are truly serious about controlling the national debt, they'll have to start by ditching the kleptocracy/multinational tax code.)

 

Tax cuts for the rich, Wall St & billionaire bailouts, the deregulatory state -- where profits are privatized but known costs, cleanup, and remediation are shifted onto the disenfranchised taxpayer -- can only be achieved on the scale seen in America, by virtue of America’s ability to print money (i.e., exorbitant privilege).  America now possesses what can only be characterized as a billionaire welfare state, thanks to exorbitant privilege. 

 

Perhaps the most hideous and lethal outcome of America’s exorbitant privilege is astronomical DOD and Security State budgets, where the U.S. spends more than the next ten nations combined on weapons and endless for-profit wars.  Is America any safer as a result of all this military spending?  That's highly doubtful, but that's not the point either.  Clearly, the resulting debt has made the U.S. economy and the nation weaker.  Americans now find themselves enslaved and indentured to the debt accumulated feeding the war machine, fighting aimless, meaningless wars, so that generals, military contractors, politicians, and Wall St can be made fabulously wealthy destroying, indenturing, and seizing the assets of nation states.  Who said colonization is dead?  But the fun doesn’t stop here, the U.S. deep & surveillance state often turns loose, what it learns overseas, on an unsuspecting & docile American public (and vice versa). 

 

Of course, all this money printing, debt, and exorbitant privilege comes at a time, when Americans have been made worse off.  Not only can they not afford medical care, but 33% work for less than $15, 36% work Gig, 63% can’t manage a $400 emergency; and 63% live check to check.  This is by no accident.  America’s oligarchs like their labor pool destitute, desperate, and down & out. It makes American workers easy to exploit. Moreover, child poverty is soaring, Americans can’t afford to procreate, and America is way behind many other Western democracies in the social service provided to backstop a failed libertarian economic paradigm.  Add in systemic price gouging on essentials, such as food, fuel, rents, and utility bills, and America is a powder keg of instability and social unrest (w/ a corporately controlled MSM stirring the cauldron 24/7/365). 

 

Moreover, thanks to exorbitant privilege… resulting exorbitant national debt, and money printing & interest rate suppression in support of that national debt…  Wall St has enjoyed a phenomenal period of free money welfare, from the Federal Reserve.  This money has been used to consolidate big biz into a monopoly economy, where concentrated power, indeed totalitarian economic power, now resides in the hands of a privileged few.  Thanks to exorbitant privilege the U.S. has become both a kleptocracy and an oligarchy. CEO’s, monopolies, and oligarchs use their power to dictate wages and price, demand corporate welfare from global governments … as there are no markets, only corporate and economic hegemony.  That is to say, totalitarian control over consumers, politicians, and to a large degree, labor, as monopoly limits choice for both consumers and labor.

 

The fun & games with exorbitant privilege doesn’t stop with the persecution of the American people, however, it is also exported offshore.  Petrodollars, dollar denominated commodities, and America’s war machine means America is able to export inflation, deflation, and its failed economic models overseas, by the power of bankers, dollar denominated debt, holding the reserve currency to the world, and at the barrel of a gun. 

 

      

 

 

 

 

There’s so much evil to unpack, as a result of America possessing the world’s fiat currency, that I’ve just scratched the surface.  The spillover effects and impact of exorbitant privilege, from the dictators we prop up to the bloodshed, human rights abuses, & repression America supports, both domestic & foreign… in the furtherance of commercial dominance, to the make the oligarchy richer still, in the name of profits, and in order to be the world’s banking, corporate, and military hegemon sickens the soul.

In the U.S. some are quick to point out that red states take in from the federal government far more largesse than they pay into the federal government in taxes. But what is rarely discussed, if ever, is how the kleptocracy, monopolies, and oligarchy take in far more than they pay into the federal government & society.  How else do we explain $35 trillion plus in national debt, accumulated funding billionaire & Wall St. bailouts, tax cuts for the rich, corp welfare, privatization schemes, rampant speculation & greed, the MIC, and endless for profit wars (backstopped & funded by exorbitant privilege and the central bank).  This is to say, when the empire falls, blame will squarely rest on the socialist, some might say a communistic, 1%, who have turned wealth extraction, and mining & statism, from the U.S. government into a business model.  Leaving everyday Americans to suffer the fallout: higher taxes, the elimination of the middle class & the American dream, and endless austerity.  The red states take more from the feds than they pay in?  Indeed, they do... just like our out of control socialists, the billionaires and multinationals.

 

And what’s truly amazing is that exorbitant privilege, the world’s fiat currency is merely a tool.  And like any tool, just as it can be a force for great evil, it can be a force for great good.  The potential for fiat currency to do great things, to be an instrument to further aid and help humanity, instead of crush, destabilize, kill, injure, and maim – in the name of greed – are equally infinite.

 

Presently, however, under the American regime, one nation under oligarchy, exorbitant privilege, the debt ceiling, the national debt, and the failed two-party system… are all being used to do hell’s amount evil to the American people and to the world.  It also explains why the Federal Reserve is both the most powerful and least understood U.S. government branch. 

 

Exorbitant privilege reminds us that democracy doesn’t die in the darkness… no, democracy dies in broad daylight, under azure skies of the deepest blue, like semi-automatic weapons fire inside an American school. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023