Once in a Generation?

Once in a Generation?

 

Blaring car horns on the three-lane A40 in west London are nothing new. However, on Saturday, they weren’t aimed at other drivers for a change; instead it was Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, who was the target of their anger as part of the “Takedown Tesla” movement, which has spread from the United States.

 

“It’s too overwhelming to do nothing,” said Louise Cobbett-Witten, who has family in the US. “There is real solace in coming together like this, everyone has to do something. We haven’t got a big strategy besides just standing on the side of the street, holding signs and screaming.”

 

-       Protesters picket London Tesla showroom on global anti-Musk day, Guardian

 

By Gregg Wall (3-29-2025)

 

The 2008 financial crash provided a once in a generation opportunity to revisit America’s libertarian paradigm and overhaul the greed first economy.  But the Federal Reserve quickly stepped in with an alphabet soup of programs and money printing to backstop, bailout, and support America’s failed establishment, the empire, our teetering economy, the political duopoly, and of course, Wall St.  Post-bailout, financial engineering and greed would remain, the crooks were rewarded with greater concentration of Wall St banks, those CEOs that exited were often well rewarded with golden parachutes, no one went to jail, Washington exhaled and gave a collective sigh of relief.  The American people, on the other hand, were stuck with austerity, the IOU, trillions in debt, the very same economy that had failed them.  The American people, and many Western citizens, faced central bank easy money campaigns that further fueled corporate consolidation, debt slavery, inflated asset classes of the rich, spurred M&A, monopoly & monopsony, provided cheap debt to finance the building of factories & operations offshore, and catastrophic wage & wealth inequality

 

The national debt leading into the crisis was approximately $12 trillion when Bush (W) left office, due to Middle East wars and tax cuts (which largely benefited war contractors and the wealthy).  Today, the national debt has exploded to $40 trillion (including Trump’s Wall St bailout in his first term).

 

As gloomy as these economic times are for many, Trump’s chaos and tariffs, the desire for a restoration of the American economy and manufacturing, the fading out of unipolar world power (like the death of a star or a supernova), and the incoming multipolar world order… also provides an opportunity: another once in a generation opportunity to revisit Western economies.  An opportunity presents itself once again, to ditch - or significantly moderate - colonialism, debt extortion & slavery, deregulation, financial engineering, greed first economics, necro-politics, neoliberalism, oligarchy and endless colonialism and wars.  You know, recognize the fraud, failure, moral bankruptcy & degeneracy surrounding Western economies & governments.  And recognize what a complete disaster it’s been.

 

Will humanity seize the moment?  There certainly are a great many barriers to change: the predatory elite are not feeling contrite, not in the least.  Problem?  What problems?  But DOGE and Mr. Musk’s efforts in Washington tell us that all is not well, there is a big problem.  As we would expect, banks, the billionaire class, and Wall St. are shirking responsibility and failing to, correctly, blame what drove America’s debt to catastrophic levels.  Specifically, American elites are not willing to hit pause and take the time to correctly assess blame to the billionaire welfare state; corporate entitlements; dereg and lack of funding for regulatory bodies; an unaudited DOD and endless for-profit wars & empire; explosive growth in corporate welfare; fraudulent privatization schemes; globalization; laissez-faire; money in politics; neoliberalism; our trickle-down tax code; AI, automation, Wall St greed and its impact upon labor & the public; and corporate consolidation as a means to eliminate labor and simultaneously the tax base, etc., etc.  Instead, DOGE is taking a blowtorch to the federal workforce, regulatory agencies, the tattered remains of America’s safety net (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) … not with the goal of paying down debt but with the objective of further consolidating corporate & oligarch power, greater privatization of government, and a greater transfer of wealth to the obscenely wealthy.  In a similar manner, tariffs, under Trump, allegedly serve a dual aim…  designed not only to restore business to the U.S. but also to raise taxes on the public, so that more tax cuts and welfare can be heaped upon the anointed few.  

 

Musk & Trump seem hellbent on misdirection and sophistry… again, blaming the American public and other nations for the sins of the billionaire class, deregulation, globalization, and the neoliberal economy that have failed the United States (and much of the West).  Musk and Trump blaming Americans and social programs for the fallout & national debt created by our central bank, corrupt crony government, and the libertarian economy… when the nation’s rulers looted and ran the country into the abyss over the last forty-five years.  Trump scapegoating trading partners for ripping off America, when it was America’s captains of industry, CEOs, and shareholder value that led the charge in exporting the US economy, jobs, opportunity, and tax base offshore (so as to exploit foreign labor, governments, judicial systems, and tax laws).  Have some of our partners adopted mercantilist economic & trading policies?  Absolutely.  But again, it was American boardrooms, C-suites, corporations that ultimately pulled the trigger on moving American manufacturing offshore.  Greed and an entirely corrupt congress and political duopoly allowed that to happen.  And there is no recognition of any of this.  The establishment and the MSM are predictably silent.  Wall St, predictably, wants to ignore all this and go back to business as usual.  Trump gets credit for wanting to return businesses home, but his plan – and a lack of communication as to what’s in store – appear strained at best.  And DOGE is upsetting a lot of Americans, including republican rank & file voters.  With his empire on the line & Tesla sales down, Musk appears unhinged, showing up in right-wing echo chambers to vent.

 

Neoliberalism and corporate consolidation not only provide totalitarian power over government, labor, prices, profits, and wages… but it also crushes the public at large, by eliminating jobs & income.  Neoliberalism and corporate consolidation redistributes wealth and wages to a predatory few, and it’s an unmitigated disaster.  It’s also highly damaging to our economy, no wonder 25% of the economy/GDP is dependent upon federal spending.  No one, that I’m aware of, has owned up to any of this.  No CEOs, no economists & politicians, no central bankers, no oligarchs… instead, the public is gaslighted and lied to constantly, via the establishment's mouthpiece, the MSM, that everything is well, the economy is sound.  Go back to sleep, what are you whining about: tent cities and soaring poverty, notwithstanding.

 

And how do we know dereg and neoliberalism have failed?  There is: the aforementioned national debt, and the acceleration in the growth of national and private debt; there’s growing child poverty; homelessness; a complete lack of affordability; the death of social mobility; the dearth of jobs that pay a living wage; the eradication of the American Dream – mugged, beaten and raped by private equity and Wall St criminals; deaths of despair & fentanyl abuse; medical bankruptcy; and ever-increasing corporate welfare.  It’s a red flag: widespread corruption and the inability of congress, the president, and state legislative bodies to say NO to the demands of oligarchs and Wall St.

 

I lived through the ‘80s, I drank the Reagan Kool-Aid, and I can tell you we had it beaten into us that tax cuts for the rich would come trickling down and rain manna (bread) from the heavens.  A rising tide would lift all boats.  Obscene profits would cause competition and new entrants into the marketplace, so that monopolies could not prey upon the public and labor, prey upon the nation.  Junk debt, Milken, and private equity were just getting started… I’m not sure anyone dreamed of the financially engineered insanity that would follow.  Of course, it was all a lie.  Tax cuts… Trump and the GOP are about to embark on a new round w/ complicit Dems… do not lead to investment in CAPEX or new competing entrants into the marketplace.  And why should they, when the idiots in government are willing to dole out close to two hundred billion in corporate welfare, per annum?  (By the way, $200 billion is light, when we consider the indirect subsidies industries like O&G receive annually, for burning down the planet w/ zero accountability or hits to their financial statements.)  Instead, tax cuts are hoarded or are directed back to wealthy shareholders or investors in the form of dividends, earnings, yet greater financial engineering, AI and algorithms that accelerate collusion & layoffs, and of course, market manipulation and stock buybacks. 

 

The irony, despite all the chaos surrounding Trump’s efforts to return businesses home… corporate greed still reigns, and extremely wealthy companies are still flooding and pumping money into Mexico.  Read here, here and here.  Seems failure and fraud are everywhere these days, neoliberalism is dying along with the planet that the oligarchy appears perfectly content to destroy.  A once in a generation opportunity to create a new economic paradigm awaits… or, given the state of the world, one final opportunity awaits?  Before the candle that is humanity is finally snuffed out by corporate greed and economic violence. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025