Neoliberalism's Highway to Hell

Neoliberalism's Highway to Hell 

 

The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel despite Washington’s concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

 

-      U.S. signs off on more bombs, warplanes for Israel, Washington Post

 

By Gregg Wall (3-30-2024)

 

The Baltimore bridge disaster this week was just another stoplight on America’s highway to hell.  The collapsing bridge could have been an opportunity to reflect upon the U.S. economy, government, and regulatory state (what little remains of it), but within a few short hours Biden was offering up taxpayer money to paper over yet another crisis and quite possibly shower the shipping companies with corporate welfare.  Let’s see, this latest debacle comes after an aircraft monopoly, Boeing, couldn’t keep a door connected to the fuselage on an Air Alaska 737 - Max 9… and then, there’s the 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment in Palestine, Ohio.  That and countless other disasters and near misses that occur in the United States daily.

 

The American people have been fed a line about our monopoly economy (how monopolies are good for jobs and efficient producers); but between quality and safety failures, and the tendency of monopolies to kill an economy, innovation, jobs, and opportunity, there’s very little trust in these utilities left, if any.  North Americans are being burned out, flooded, and poisoned by corporations, and the politicians the corporations own, in the name of greed and profits.  

 

Canada is in the same boat.  And in much of Europe and the UK, the same holds true.  Many of these economies have been commodified, deregulated, financialized, and globalized, with the courts, laws, and legislative bodies rigged entirely in capital’s favor.  Workers, particularly the younger generation, are being crushed on benefits, cost of living, housing, jobs, and retirement savings.  And these monopoly, neoliberal economies are characterized by astronomical sums of government & private sector debt… debt accumulated, especially in America, to fund corporate welfare, absurd DOD/MIC spending, endless for-profit wars, a tax code for billionaires & multinationals, and Wall St bailouts, et al.

 

 

 

 

The New York Times did a piece this week on the erosion of libertarianism, titled: The World’s Unpopular Leaders, by German Lopez.  In his piece, Mr. Lopez notes that POTUS Biden is deeply unpopular, but his unpopularity is exceeded by six Western heads of state (who will likely be replaced in their upcoming, respective elections).  That’s a huge turnover.  What could have made these leaders so deeply unpopular?  Mr. Lopez cites the four I’s, as the reason for tremendous dissatisfaction, or inflation, immigration, inequality, and incumbency (which is a tremendous start).  But, arguably, the four I’s are symptomatic of the four C’s:  Centrism, Corporatism, Corruption, and Consolidation.  Time and time again in Europe and N. America we’ve seen where these heads of state -- and predominately, two-party systems -- have been revealed as little more than a front for corporate rule and oligarchy.  That is to say, our elected politicians have little or no interest in serving The People… time and time again, they demonstrate nothing but contempt for the public they, allegedly, serve… but rather, serve exclusively capital and great wealth & power.  And as these leaders no longer feel any accountability or responsibility to respect the will of the people, they have basically become servants and stewards of fascism (the marriage of the corporation and the state).  The overriding ideology - neoliberalism - that links the four C’s is essentially, despotic capital rule. Further making capital’s control absolute is the consolidation & monopoly formation that has transpired over the last 43 years.  

From NY Times

 

It is this hegemonic power that drives Mr. Lopez’ four I's.  From corruption, the purchase of elections & politicians, comes the dominance of the extremist corporate and centrist neoliberal ideology (which the corporate MSM backstops and defines as the ‘center’).  With monopoly power arrives inflation (aka supply-side price gouging), and immigration (largely tolerated – despite the endless culture wars & political grandstanding - because immigration suppresses benefits & wages on behalf of capital).  Immigration makes the wealthy… well, wealthier.  Of course, it is the four C's that also drive inequality, that is monopoly’s ability, via monopsony, to dictate benefits, gov social policy, and wages.  And then there’s incumbency, the idea that duopoly’s leaders burn their political capital over time… again, diminished political fortunes are spawned by the cronyism, abject corruption, and the complete lack of accountability we see within Western political duopolies. 

 

Throughout the West citizens are waking up to the fact that the economic & political deck is entirely stacked against them.  If the public is lucky, politicians and centrist parties will offer incrementalism with some social or public policy modifications to soften neoliberalism’s and oligarchy’s brutally jagged & sharp edges.  If the public is unlucky, politicians will engage in endless cultures wars, fund genocide, and gaslight the voting public on how scary and wretched their opponent is.  Meanwhile, wage & wealth inequality -- indeed, poverty -- grows to revolution inducing proportions.  Most upsetting and entirely hypocritical, the public sees the entire economy is based upon privatized profits and socialized corporate welfare (and extraordinary debt) … while the citizenry are told to fast on endless austerity and an ever-shrinking portfolio of grossly underfunded public services.  In short, the public not only carries the monopolies and oligarchy on their back, under a low wage regime… but they also must pay for the national debt used to bailout the rich, repeatedly (not to mention, debt used to fund monstrous, for-profit wars). 

 

All this is to say, the four I’s of our collective discontent roll up to the four C’s of hegemonic domination, a failing crony neoliberal ideology and the soon to be fired politicians, who carry water for same.  The public is also learning that merely pivoting back and forth between the two corporatist and centrist political parties, ultimately, achieves little.  Hence, the trend towards greater unaffiliated voting (i.e. independents), and movement towards third party candidates & parties, or what the corporate MSM calls the extreme left and right.  How ironic, when the so-called centrists and corporatists embrace endless: austerity for the public, Wall St. bailouts, absurd sums of debt, genocide, radical neoliberalism, and wars.  

 

Who are the extremists again? 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

Neoliberalism is Dead

Neoliberalism is Dead

 

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregates commensurate with the economy's long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.

 

-       Section 2A Monetary Policy Objectives

 

By Gregg Wall (3-16-2024)

 

Neoliberalism is dead, buried – like an avalanche – under the crushing weight of bank & billionaire bailouts, corruption, failed duopoly, greed, predatory monopolies, oligarchy, and endless for-profit wars.  America increasingly reduced to the status of a banana republic, its government for sale and rent to the highest bidder.  So entirely corrupt & lost, so ignominious and yet foreseeable the fall, America fails to shock… perhaps the only thing surprising is how insular & thin the bubble Dem and GOP grandees, the MSM talking heads, and their owners all dwell within.  Entirely lost in the lies, fiction, and narratives they attempt to sell the public. 

 

Perhaps there’s no better example of America’s precipitous fall than the attack upon freedom of speech, as congress, in record-time, came together in near unanimous bipartisan support for the TikTok ban this week.  You know Washington and AIPAC have entirely lost the narrative (w/ far too many facts running directly counter to the American/Israeli storyline), and have no legitimate response, when they - like a despotic regime – have begun to outlaw speech and attack online communications & networking.  The lies are stacking up so fast… put out by the Biden administration, Bibi, & the MSM… that major news organizations no longer have any credibility.  Absolutely pathetic.  Seems that the majority of America’s youth, the under 35 crowd, no longer believe the Boomer establishment, the lies and the propaganda. Gerontocracy has grown fetid, rotted, high on its own supply, and lazy. 

 

What could have turned off the younger generations?  Perhaps it’s the endless wars, the cataclysmic national debt, the massive transfer of wealth and welfare to the connected and the powerful… or simply, the endless litany of lies and unfulfilled commitments Biden promised in 2020 to get elected.  Maybe it’s the predatory monopoly economy that destroy jobs, opportunity, innovation, and continually – w/ no reason other than greed – uses it totalitarian power to dictate prices, wages, government policy, and foreign policy.  It’s all a lie.  Everything we’ve been taught. Unelected, unaccountable Boardroom & C-suite dictatorships with horrific, unimaginable powers have turned the United States into a totalitarian state (with just the fig leaf of a failed, entirely corrupt, two-party system).  In the span of my lifetime, America went from having a thriving middle class to a two-tiered society: the haves and the have nots. 

 

The younger generations, they know.  They see with their own eyes how their parents live, or their grandparents lived.  They are willing to work and put in the time, but the opportunity is simply not there.  The economy is consolidated and w/ that consolidation, a large number of well-paying jobs are eliminated.  Child poverty is rising, suicides rising, the planet burning, tent cities growing more numerous, deaths of despair on the rise, greed – masquerading as inflation – has sent the cost-of-living spiraling out of control, obscene wage & wealth inequality, artificial and contrived scarcity… entirely manufactured… so a few can profit, and the icing on the putrid cake:  catastrophic national debt forever used as an excuse for endless austerity.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

The systemic corruption, the capture of the nation by a predatory few is deeply upsetting, unsettling, and is already setting off blowback, paroxysms, and a revolution in thinking and attitudes. Sclerotic, entirely corrupt leadership tends to have that effect.  And at the epicenter of all sits the Federal Reserve.  No other nation in the brief history of humanity has been gifted with so much power and privilege, as that afforded to the Federal Reserve; and no other nation in the brief history of humanity has squandered and wasted so much power and privilege in the span of a little over three decades (in a violent orgy of corruption & greed).  Unprecedented greed and corruption in the form of for-profit wars, for-profit empire, financed colonialism, privatization schemes, tax cuts for the uber-wealthy, the massive transfer of wealth, inflated asset values for the rich, endless Wall St bailouts, the aforementioned economic consolidation into a totalitarian economy, and the buyout of the U.S. government itself… all it funded by the Federal Reserve and monetary policy.  One endless supply of socialism and welfare mainlined into the arms of oligarchy, multinationals, and the political class; and one big F.U. to the American people, seventy-eight percent of which now live one pay check away from humility or are already on the streets. 

 

Neoliberalism is dead, flatlined, braindead… kept alive, in a zombie state, by an endless infusion of what Wall St likes to call ‘liquidity’ or in more common terms, bailout money.  As I noted last November, the U.S. economy is kept alive on an endless diet of money printing and war.  Otherwise, the economy is actually shrinking, failing to grow, and it certainly isn’t taking care of the vast majority of Americans.  Not only does the economy ride on unsustainable debt and aimless wars… but crushed and suppressed labor also keeps the house of cards afloat (with low wages and lousy benefits, see for-profit healthcare).  Someone has to pay for all those extravagant CEO pay packages and it's generally labor. 

 

Every time a crisis occurs the congress is bailed out of any tough decision making or choices, and the Federal Reserve steps in with a catastrophic flood of money and debt.  Every time the economy falls down, it’s understood that no questions are to be asked, and no scrutiny from the public or our ‘democratic government’ is to occur, so increasingly the Federal Reserve and monetary policy becomes the de facto solution. 

 

But if we carefully examine the FED policy objectives … endlessly bailing out our failed libertarian economy, endlessly propping up fiscal malfeasance, and financing catastrophic debt and wars… appears nowhere in the FED’s mandate.  Four successive FED chairs have enabled gross corruption, avarice, incompetence, and the abdication of responsibility & accountability, by both congress and America’s private sector. 

 

In fact, what can be clearly argued is that the FED’s monetary policies of continuously financing catastrophic debt and fraud, endless wars, limitless bailouts, bottomless corporate welfare, and billionaire & multinational entitlements… the consolidation of the economy into monopolies… has had disastrous consequences for the FED’s true mandate, that of maximum employment (of well paying jobs) and stable prices.  Funding the creation of a monopoly economy, via easy money, where unelected, unaccountable CEOs dictate prices, wages, and government policy … along with runaway national debt… clearly, is both detrimental and destructive to labor, families, children, the American people, and the long-term viability of the nation.  

 

America needs a new FED chair with a new outlook, and renewed commitment to FED policy, instead of the myopia that surrounds the latest four FED chairs… who constantly hold up labor as an excuse for bailing out a failed economic model, Wall St., and the perpetuation of a bankrupt status quo.  In summary, it’s long past time to cut up the Democratic and Republican parties’ credit card… for endless wars, empire, wholesale fraud & corruption, a failed supply-side paradigm, genocide, limitless private sector bailouts (with credit card privileges extended to oligarchy, multinationals, and Wall St).  

 

None of that is in the FED mandate. With the Congress cut off, real conversations can begin about what to do with the national debt run up by an ultra-corrupt gerontocracy, from taxing great wealth to writing down, slowly, the national debt (in whole or part), to eliminating billionaire entitlements.  Cuts to Social Security and Medicare should not be entertained. 

 

The American people have had enough fraud. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024

Bibi is Hamas… 

 

 

A note at the top of the two-page memo pointed to an instruction “from Mark” to pay attention to a particular paragraph under “coverage guidance”. The paragraph said that, while CNN would report the human consequences of the Israeli assault and the historical context of the story, “we must continue always to remind our audiences of the immediate cause of this current conflict, namely the Hamas attack and mass murder and kidnap of civilians”. (Italics in the original.)

CNN staff members said the memo solidified a framework for stories in which the Hamas massacre was used to implicitly justify Israeli actions, and that other context or history was often unwelcome or marginalized.

“How else are editors going to read that other than as an instruction that no matter what the Israelis do, Hamas is ultimately to blame? Every action by Israel – dropping massive bombs that wipe out entire streets, its obliteration of whole families – the coverage ends up massaged to create a ‘they had it coming’ narrative,” said one staffer.

-       CNN staff say network’s pro-Israel slant amounts to ‘journalistic malpractice’, The Guardian

 

By Gregg Wall (3-2-2024) 

 

The Western corporate mainstream media (MSM) has been on a tear lately, not just failing to hold elites and the powerful accountable, but in providing narratives that simply are not true, half-baked, and/or ignoring key events, context, and facts altogether.  In regards October 7, we have a form of MSM commission and omission, all the way to journalistic malpractice.  Commission is doing something wrong… by way of example, reporting out unsubstantiated Israeli military sourced stories, like the, alleged, Hamas perpetrated beheading of babies and rapes (which were never proven or purported documentation & evidence was nonexistent or specious).  UNRWA was yet another example, where's the UNRWA complicity with Hamas evidence?  Then there’s omission, failing to do the right thing, that is to say, report all the facts.  And hold American and Israeli militaries & politicians accountable based on those facts. 

 

In regards omission, one of the greatest problems with Western media is failing to bring home, frequently and often, how much the Israeli military knew about October 7 in advance, and as importantly, how connected Bibi Netanyahu was with Hamas.  That’s not to say, papers, like the NY Times, didn’t report out on Netanyahu’s connection with Hamas… his funding, oversight, and support of Hamas… but given how Hamas has become the focal point and justification for the genocide in Gaza, and the slaughter of children and women, one would expect the press to hold Bibi and Biden accountable.  That is, America’s MSM and State Department love to remind everyone of the Oct. 7 reason for the genocide, but conveniently omit that Oct. 7 and Hamas was a direct result of the Israeli gov’s funding, oversight, and support for Hamas.

 

Once that narrative was adopted by the Western MSM (to wit: Hamas is the mother of all that is evil) no reporter, that I am aware of, ever bothered to go back and ask Bibi or Biden key questions.  Wait, Mr. Prime Minister, Mr. President … we are doing battle with Hamas, Hamas is less than 1% of Gaza’s population: and yet, Israel with U.S. taxpayer funded arms and munitions has killed 30,000 Palestinians (thousands of women and children); and yet, Bibi funded Hamas, Bibi supported Hamas, Bibi was the patron saint of Hamas, because that support thwarted a two-state solution; and yet, Bibi and the Israeli military were warned about the pending Hamas Oct. 7 attack (but stood down & conducted a rave)?  Please explain why the U.S. taxpayer is paying Israel to murder thousands and thousands of women and children, surely they are not Hamas?  Please explain what the resulting genocide does for America’s and Israel’s standing in the world?  The answers to these questions are huge because if Bibi knew and stood down, deliberately (something we may never know because it involves intent), in light of the pending Hamas attack, this would call into question the Israeli government leadership and its morality in conducting this war… and reveal to all possibly other motives, such as colonization and a land/resources grab.  Moreover, the Israeli government has been reported to have killed Israeli hostages.  The Israeli government, again, has murdered thousands of Palestinian children in indiscriminate bombing campaigns, funded & supported by the U.S. taxpayer. 

 

And the reason for all this, the justification, is Hamas and the events of Oct. 7.  Given the importance of Hamas and the events of Oct. 7, one would think that any responsible news organization would want to delve into all this and hammer Bibi’s relationship with Hamas, and the security lapse of October 7^th.   The Oct. 7 Hamas breakout of the prison camp, the Israeli Prime Minister was camp comandante of… how did that happen?  (We’d also want to know why the Congress of the U.S. was betting on defense stocks in advance of Oct. 7, and what exactly those members of congress knew, as reported by Unusual Whales)   Interestingly, Bibi appears to be placing as much distance between himself and the pending Oct. 7 investigation as possible and is forever in search of a new Middle East war, with which to suck the American taxpayer into.  What would the American public’s reaction be to the knowledge that Bibi condoned, funded, & oversaw the Hamas organization that operated within his Gaza prison (and what if the MSM - and the State Department - reminded the American public of this information every time they cited Hamas and Oct. 7 as the reason for the genocide)?  Given the importance of Hamas and the events of Oct. 7, frequently cited by genocide supporters, Biden’s unflinching and unconditional support, and out of respect for the U.S. taxpayer… one would think the MSM would want to know what Bibi, Biden, Congress, and the Pentagon knew leading up to Oct. 7.  And final questions:

 

Why should America continue to support Bibi Netanyahu’s government with billions in tax dollars…  essentially funding social programs Americans can only dream of, like free college and socialized medicine…  given how corrupt and compromised Netanyahu’ government obviously is?  Since, per the State Department, Hamas is the sum of all evil, why hasn’t the U.S. arrested Bibi Netanyahu for his complicity & support for Hamas?  How did a foreign government, Israel, come to control and manipulate the U.S. Congress (using taxpayer wealth no less)?  What information does Israel have and hold over American politicians?  What of the irrevocable damage, under Biden’s & Bibi's leadership, to United States' and Israel's respective reputations?

 

Why are so many of the editors, management, and reporters that work for corporate media so awful?  Or are they really not awful and lackeys, but corporate ownership won’t allow them to do their jobs?  Isn't it time to drop the partisan reporting and report the facts and the context?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ukraine has been back in the news because it was the two-year anniversary and Biden is screaming for tens of billions more in support for another fraudulent war.   And once again, we have the MSM engaged in the act of commission and omission.  For while there’s isolated reporting on the EU funding the Russian war machine and Putin’s ability to wage war, nobody ever asks EU leaders, Biden, members of Congress, or even Zelensky…. Why in the hell is the West fighting & funding this war when essentially, NATO is buying Russian Oil & Gas?  Doesn’t the EU’s purchase of Russian oil & gas run counter to our goal of defeating Russian aggression and pushing Russia out of the Ukraine?     

 

Unless the point of the Ukraine war is to replace Afghanistan with another endless, for-profit war, because America’s & Europe’s neoliberal economies now require perpetual debt and war to keep up appearances and GDP?

 

Shouldn’t the MSM be asking: Given the slaughter of innocent Ukrainians, the severe displacement... whom Western leaders appear very cavalier about… how the West can fund both sides of the war?  None of this, of course, gets into why the war is being fought to begin with or the pretext, which is NATO’s failure to live up to its promise to Russian leadership, at the time of German reunification, not to advance NATO east into the former Soviet Bloc.  

 

What we see here on the part of corporate MSM, consistently, is a massive abdication of responsibility and loss of journalistic integrity.  A MSM more interested in trafficking in political narratives and the party line ... in support of endless wars & mass murder … rather than in providing context, facts, and truth with which the public can reach its own conclusions.  Is this yet another benefit for elites in the massive consolidation of media organizations presently underway?  It’s almost as if we need greater regulation of the Western MSM, complete with a full accounting of lies, half-truths, commissions, and omissions? 

 

How would the American people feel, facing endless austerity and endless excuses for not providing fundamental social services (taken for granted throughout the EU, like Medicare for All or universal health care) … if they knew their tax dollars were going to fight a war in support of the Ukraine, while EU and NATO partners were funding Russia?  Seems like a complete waste of good taxpayer money, does it not? 

 

All this… the litany of lies, the selling of narratives, the peddling of propaganda… seems to point out journalistic fraud and malpractice on the part of MSM reporters, editors, and management.  If politicians aren’t going to hold themselves accountable… and editors & reporters aren’t going to hold the oligarchy and politicians accountable… no wonder America increasingly looks like a failed state with $38 trillion in national debt and rising.  Nobody questions any of it, particularly the MSM, but instead, corporate news dutifully trots out the party line, the elementary binary narrative.  We might as well be reading Pravda? 

 

No wonder Americans and citizens in the West are increasingly turning to social media and start up news organizations (aka the independent & investigative news media) as a source of information. Thank you Bad Faith, Grayzone, and so many other independent news organizations and podcasts for all the good work that you do. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2024