Libertarianism is Spent

Libertarianism is Spent 

 

Milei has slashed public spending, dismissed tens of thousands of public employees and led a major deregulation drive since taking office in December 2023. But in recent months, things have begun to go wrong for him.

 

“The economy has not advanced sufficiently, inflation has not been brought down in any significant way, and wages have been practically frozen,” said Tokatlian, a professor of international relations at the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.

 

The government faced a cryptocurrency debacle after the president promoted an obscure token called $Libra, which soared in value following his endorsement before collapsing dramatically, prompting dozens of criminal complaints alleging fraud.

 

Milei also vetoed bills that would have increased pensions and disability benefits, but last week, the national congress took a step not seen in more than 20 years and overturned the president’s veto.

 

Signs of Milei’s growing unpopularity were already evident when, nearly two weeks ago, he was pelted with stones by demonstrators while campaigning for Sunday’s election.

 

-             Argentinians deliver electoral blow to Milei’s scandal-rocked government – Guardian

 

 

Gregg Wall (9-27-2025)

 

This week, on as The World Burns…. Team Trump rides to the rescue of failed far-right, chainsaw wielding, libertarian lunatic, Javier Milei, President of Argentina.  Basically, negotiating swap lines in the billions of dollars, essentially a US taxpayer funded bailout, orchestrated by Treasury Secretary Bessent and Trump.  Predictably, another right-wing extremist and the libertarian economic model went down in flames in Argentina.   But Argentina isn’t the only place…. Neoliberals – of the more staid, “centrist” variety - have been flaming out throughout the West, often replaced by far-right extremists who promise the moon and the stars, only to get caught up in corruption scandals, broken promises, lies, transferring wealth to the rich, while demanding austerity of the public. (JMH has been writing about this global phenomenon, the death of neoliberalism, aka libertarianism, for some time.)  And often running up debt and deficits in the process.  Demonstrating for all the world to see, once again, what an abject failure libertarianism, crony-capitalism, supply-side, and trickle down actually are, as if the world needed another lesson.  Again, it’s the debt and deficits that are the telltale signs of failure, the flashing red light.  Because libertarians don’t need the government, remember?  Government is bad, the private sector is almighty. So why is the entire system constantly being bailed out by the state, why do billionaires & crooks constantly look to profit off the taxpayer with crony privatization schemes, while central bank printing presses burn & smoke? 

 

Except that’s not true.  Turns out the rich and powerful love socialism, love privatized profits and socialized bailouts, losses, and corporate welfare.  Whether it’s Milei in Argentina, Trump in America, Dani Smith in Alberta, Canada, or coming soon to the UK, Nigel Farage… we see a familiar/similar pattern:  promises of massive libertarian reforms, demonization of the left and often immigrants, promises to bring skyrocketing inflation under control, promises to unleash the almighty private sector - to bring jobs and opportunity home, and bring down and take a chainsaw to the state.   What happens in reality, once in power?  Promises are ignored, government becomes a spoils system to reward wealthy backers and insiders, corruption and more corruption, debt and deficits climb, government actually grows with crony insider deals and privatization scams.  Children, families, labour and the public suffer as the economy grows more predatory, as libertarianism fails.  Coming as no surprise to anyone, monopoly, market based solutions, privatization are all revealed as a fraud, repeatedly.  The transfer of public assets & public services to powerful friends, another scam… crony government, spoils government at its very worst.

 

And the peasants, like myself… well, we get austerity, corruption, six years of soaring prices and corporate greed, and in the States, endless wars & violence.  We get gaslighting and lies from grandstanding libertarians.  We get fuzzy metrics, like GDP and growth.  Metrics that do precious little to reveal just how poorly libertarians in positions of power are actually performing.  But most galling of all, we get unimaginable hubris and arrogance from political leadership and their billionaire & multinational backers.  Until Milei needs a bailout, Dani Smith is caught in her latest lie and coverup, or Trump does a face plant on affordability, endless wars and violence… as debt and deficits soar to bailout far-right politicians, cronies, and libertarianism.

 

Turns out, bootstraps and rugged individualism never applies to the billionaires, bankers, Silicon Valley whiz kids, err adults… never applies to well-connected libertarians like Milei.  Instead, despite an endless litany of scandals & fraud, they often double down, never admit they are wrong, bulldoze ahead, take a chainsaw to the public.  That’s right, when it comes to addressing debt and deficits under libertarian governments, it’s the public and public services that must pay the price… never the kleptocracy.  The libertarian solution is cut gov, cut services, take away medical services from the elderly & the indigent…. Never raise taxes on the greedy, myopic billionaire class, monopolies, and utilities swimming in profits, who rip-off the public every day.

 

 

 

 

 

At some point, the public needs to acknowledge the obvious, especially MAGA type extremists… no, big daddy Trump, chainsaw madman Milei, and relentlessly on the offensive Dani Smith are clearly not looking out for your interests, nor are psychopath billionaire donors and sponsors.  In fact, they mean you harm; they are waging class warfare.  They want you destitute, struggling, they don’t want your kids or the next generation well educated.  They want you destitute, deep in hock, with a pile of unpaid medical bills and no safety net of any kind… preferably with your checking account overdrawn and your credit card maxed.  They really, really don’t like you.  They want the public at each other’s throats.  All the better to distract you and direct your attention to immigrants, the other, minorities, First Nations, trans athletes, in the case of Dani Smith, focused on Ottawa as the source of all that is evil.  Even though Carney (aka PM private equity) and Dani Smith’s interests couldn’t possibly be more aligned.  You know, the rich and libertarian politicians want you focused on the bogeyman of the day… they don’t want you focused on the criminal class of billionaires and monopolies.

 

At the end of the day, the public needs to acknowledge that the failed neoliberal duopoly, the so-called moderates but in reality, far-right extremists… have walked far-right libertarians to power.  And both factions, neoliberal duopoly and libertarian far-right populists, are identical on the economy and often foreign policy.  Fascist billionaires & monopolies can work with far-right centrist parties and far-right libertarian populists…. They just don’t want to do business with the left.  Moreover, the whole point of capitalism & libertarianism is that some countries, industries, ideas, leaders, investors must be allowed to fail, so that new ideas, investments, and leaders can thrive.  Call it private sector darwinism.  And yet, the same vicious pack of right-wing crooks & libertarian thugs continually live off state welfare & bailouts (aspire to be Too big to fail).  And the final takeaway: despite the libertarian label, libertarians love government, they love welfare, they love socialism… but exclusively for themselves.   Even more odd, these well-heeled libertarians hate competition, markets, and price discovery… in summary, they hate capitalism.   Wealthy libertarians, in reality, want the best of all words: private ownership of monopolies and utilities protected and backstopped by the state with endless war waged against the general public.  The libertarian label is just that, a brand and ideology that the politicians and wealthy are pushing on the public, continuously, while relentlessly bashing collective empathy, fraternity, government, the greater good, socialism, solidarity, and society.  Ironically, the very socialism that has made the billionaire class catastrophically & obscenely wealthy.

 

Libertarianism is good for you, the general public, but not for them, the wealthy.

 

Socialism is bad for you, the general public, but not for them, the rich, the powerful, the connected. 

 

As the public begins to discover that far-right centrist politicians rub elbows with far-right populist libertarians, and oligarchy and big biz are more than happy to work with both… it’s time to give the left a shot.  It’s long, long overdue.  Now the left has to get organized. 

 

  Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025

The Cancer within…

The Cancer within… 

 

“We have a cancer within, close to the presidency, that is growing. It is growing daily and it's going to become incurable if not excised".

 

-             White House Counsel to President Nixon, John Dean

 

By Gregg Wall (9-13-2025) 

 

August 9^th rolled by this summer, like it does every summer, with little notice or fanfare, but for me it’s always been a special day.   For August 9^th illustrates what a functioning American government, warts and all, looks like, led by moral men and women, who place country before party, nation before a president, the American people first.  August 9^th, 1974, of course, is the date Richard Milhous Nixon resigned from office.  On August 7^th, three members of Congress, led by Barry Goldwater, explained to President Nixon that he no longer enjoyed the support of the Congress and would be impeached.   Nixon, having already put the nation through a great ordeal, did the correct thing and left office, handing the reins of power to Gerald Ford.  

 

I’ve always thought the nation should commemorate both the good and the bad times… but is August 9^th really a somber date, when it so clearly demonstrates that men, even in the highest office in the land, are fully capable of putting egos and politics aside and doing the correct & moral thing on behalf of the nation and its people?

 

This year, as I thought of Nixon and what he must have gone through, his final days in the White House praying with Henry Kissinger, I couldn’t help but think of the parallels with the current monster in the White House, Donald J. Trump.  Trump, who could conceivably do the right thing, w/out threat of possible impeachment, might spare the nation three years and approximately four more months of abject failure and misery… and simply, as Nixon had done, do the correct and honorable thing and resign.  

 

The parallels between the two men are striking, eerily so.  Both presidents faced inflation and rising unemployment, both presidents were mired in deeply unpopular wars, wars both men had pledged to extricate America from.  Nixon and Trump pressured and railed at their respective Federal Reserve Chairman for lower interest rates.  Nixon pulled the US off the gold standard and Trump has increasingly introduced and pushed crypto legitimacy upon the United States, while making a fortune.  Nixon was caught up in the Watergate scandal, a break in at the DNC headquarters, and a coverup, while Trump is mired in his very own Epstein scandal, a coverup, with equally damaging repercussions for the last remaining shreds of his dignity & soul.  Then as now, Nixon refused to release the White House tapes to Congress… likewise, Trump has fought Congress on the release of the Epstein documents to the public.  Epstein documents and materials, possibly, equally as damaging to Trump and the establishment, potentially more so than Nixon’s tapes. 

 

Pretty amazing when you think about it.  Two venal men, separated by half century, caught in the damaging crossfire of their very own machinations & personal failings.   Watergate self-inflicted, Epstein and that damaging relationship with Trump, et al., also self-inflicted.  White House counsel, John Dean, warned Nixon of a cancer within the presidency, a cancer that could ultimately destroy the Nixon administration.   Similarly, Trump has what appears to be a highly malignant growth within his own administration in the form of the Epstein scandal.  And no matter the number of crises, the wars, Trump’s bobbing and weaving like a fighter on the ropes, Epstein is not likely to go away.  Trump’s adversaries know there’s blood in the water.  Trump’s adversaries, however, are likely to be reluctant to push for documents release, despite posturing…  since the entire establishment, including prominent Dems, Donors, and GOP, very well maybe involved in the pedo scandal.  That is, potentially deeply involved in the sexual assault upon underage women and young girls.  The public, those that want the truth, however, possess no similar reservations… they want justice, they demand the truth, Trump campaigned on full disclosure.  And as this is, allegedly, a government by and for the people, they deserve nothing less. 

 

 

 

 

Could Trump, like Nixon, be forced to resign?  As the Kirk assassination revealed this week, America is not the same country it was fifty-one years ago.  We are a nation in terminal decline, our congress is cowardly & corrupt and not likely to confront Trump and insist that he resign.  The death of Charlie Kirk this week and a review of Kirk’s on-line works demonstrated how much hate, rage, anger, racism, misogyny, and homophobia have become the norm in the United States.  Debate and language that would have been unacceptable just two decades ago is now the norm, under the pretense of free speech & reaching out across the divide.  It all spells out the coarsening & erosion of American society, if a society even remains.  This isn’t the GOP I once recognized, not even the GOP of Dick Cheney and George W Bush.  Ugly.  And the manner in which the Dem establishment and the MSM dutifully groveled over Kirk’s corpse was absolutely depraved and sickening.  Kirk’s body being flown around on Air Force Two… seriously?  Clearly, they plan to deify this monster, make a martyr of the Prince of Hate?

 

Free speech… sure, all for it, but unbridled hate?  Nobody should listen to that.  And yet, so many young men have.  Who does hatred coming out of Kirk’s mouth serve?  Well, it serves to divide the nation, it serves to blind, distract, and enrage its consumers & customers, it serves to provide a scapegoat for a failed dereg/libertarian economy, and the hate speech conveniently points anger and rage away from the architects of our destruction: the billionaire class, the banks, private equity firms, and multinationals.  The entities and individuals who have looted the nation, destroyed a decent standard of living, and eliminated a great many well-paying jobs under the Policy of Greed. 

 

And so here we are: Nixon, Trump, the growing cancer, and the corpse of Kirk.  The far-right salivating and screaming for blood over Kirk’s body; the public baying for the Epstein files.  The fact that Kirk’s alleged killer appears to be an Eagle Scout and the quintessential MAGA man means nothing.  Trump, like Nixon, will fight to the bitter end or until his body gives up the ghost, whichever comes first.  It shouldn’t be this way, but with American leadership in a complete state of moral collapse and demonstrating all manner of cowardice… the US government for sale to the highest bidder… only the people can save us now and the MAGA faithful appear deeply irrational, wedded to nihilism & tribalism, and devoid of all critical thinking skills.  This outcome… a large segment of the population more interested in holding minorities and immigrants responsible for their problems rather than a predatory oligarchy… was very well thought out, engineered, and entirely by design.  

 

In short, brothers and sisters, keep your powder dry, your personal protection close at hand, and stay alert.  The tumor has metastasized.

 

Selah. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025

The Road to Fascism…

The Road to Fascism… 

 

Fascism is a far-right, ultranationalist, and authoritarian political ideology that prioritizes the nation and a charismatic dictatorial leader above all else, suppressing opposition and individual rights to enforce a totalitarian state with strong military and economic control. Key characteristics include extreme nationalism, belief in a natural social hierarchy, cult of personality around a leader, violent suppression of dissent, and the subordination of individuals to the state's will. 

 

-             Fascism, Wikipedia 

 

By Gregg Wall (8-30-2025)

 

Monopolies, neoliberalism, privatization, and private equity are the societal cancer and existential crisis of our times.  They breed fascism; they metastasize into fascism.  Once we recognize corporations as fundamentally authoritarian, dictatorial, far-right, sponsors and supportive of far-right political duopolies throughout the West, coupled with the steady erosion of human rights and civil liberties… and the astronomical growth of corporate-state controlled police and surveillance states, the for-profit explosive arms buildup in the U.S. & the West… and there’s not really much to discuss.  Is there?

 

The corporations themselves are increasingly authoritarian, eschewing capitalism – as we once knew it, eschewing competition, markets, price discovery... all of it abandoned in favor of monopolies, and oligopolies, dominating single or multiple markets, with dictatorial power over government, labor, prices, the regulatory state, supply, wages. 

 

And there’s the unyielding power corporations hold over the democratic process and political parties.  Does anyone question for a moment that banks, corporations, defense contractors, high tech, private equity, Wall St firms have come to dominate the American government, own far too often the judges & politicians, so that nobody gets out of line?  The regulatory agencies co-opted and serving the very corporate entities they are supposed to regulate and manage.  The SCOTUS now rubber stamping nearly anything Trump wants.  And it’s not just in the US, we see it throughout the West: centrist, corporately owned duopolies who consistently walk far-right political parties to power, the populist-right to power.

 

Let’s break down some recent examples: 

 

Obama beget Trump.

Biden beget Trump.

Merkel & Scholz beget the AfD.

Tony Blair & Gordon Brown… beget five Tory PMs, and now Starmer begets Farage & Reform.

Trudeau nearly beget Pierre Poilievre, but instead, we got a central banker, who ran a private equity company and was installed by Trump, Mark Carney.

Macron… lost the last election to the Left, but his “centrist party” partnered with the extreme-right to keep the Left from coming to power.

 

And the pattern repeats over and over.  Two far-right political parties (aka the duopoly) extinguish and eliminate any Left parties and in the process give the people, the voter the only option available, voting for the far-right … all in the service of fascist corporations and the neoliberal paradigm.  As I’ve written before, western democracy, the franchise has increasingly become an exercise in removing one far-right party, one corporately owned party from power… only to see another far-right party, corporately owned party come to power.  So, there is zero hope of economic & political reform and change. 

 

Couple this with corporate media, which forever drums up anger, division, fear and rage on the only issue the two corporately owned parties are allowed to disagree on --- cultural wars, misogyny, racism, and xenophobia --- and you have a public that is being shifted further and further right by the two corporately owned parties.  The culture wars, by way of Orwell, are not meant to be won, they are meant to be continuous.  With left-wing parties eliminated, both corporate parties allow themselves to be pulled further and further right-wing by their billionaire and corporate benefactors.   None of this is by accident, we see the same playbook play out in Western democracy, after Western democracy.   

 

The public is often so distracted with survival, the neoliberal economic paradigm (aka anything goes for the wealthy & powerful) such a complete failure for the vast majority, that the public rarely if ever has the time to notice, that it’s the oligarchy, the kleptocracy, the bankers, and corporations that pull the duopoly’s strings… that are walking us all to fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism.   

 

The totalitarian god… greed, money, profits. 

 

With the congress, the courts, the duopoly, regulatory agencies completely under corporate control… along with fiscal, the necro-political, and tax policies… that leaves the final frontier, monetary policy.  MMT, manipulation of short term interest rates, money supply, quantitative easing, the further introduction of private crypto interests and the normalization of same, policies against or in support of inflation, the debasement of the dollar in support of catastrophic national debt, in support of private equity, and soaring asset classes of the rich… soon to be under POTUS Trump’s control.  

 

Given the chaos of the first seven to eight months, along with Trump’s first term, can you imagine how Fed Chairman Donald Trump is going to work out?  

 

One thing is for sure, zombie enterprise, private equity, commercial real estate, the neoliberal economy, and Wall St need another monetary bailout or fix… a monetary fix mainlined into the Street, empire, and the government.  Along with congress.  One of many problems is DOGE failed to deliver; in fact, DOGE likely made it worse, and Congress added further jet fuel to the debt and deficit fire with the Big, Beautiful Abomination. 

 

The FED, of course, is far from holy… it’s neither autonomous nor apolitical…  it’s always had its fingers on the economy and scales in favor of a failed status quo, in favor of the establishment, the libertarian economy, Wall St bailouts, private equity, financial engineering, financed wars & tax cuts for the rich, endless rivers of debt, exploding money supply, the creation of an insatiable oligarchy, a grossly inflated & manipulated stock market, financial warfare against America’s enemies, the failed duopoly, and every evil known to humanity.   

 

Remember this, we’ve been on the road to fascism, and we’ve arrived.  We’ve met the enemy and it’s really no surprise:  billionaires, greed, libertarians, dereg, monopolies, big business, the war lobby, the two major parties, for-profit medical care, the campaign finance system, SCOTUS, the regulatory state – as it exists, Wall St, the deep state, military contractors, central bankers, the empire.   

 

And they are stealing us blind.  They do it every day: 24/7/365. 

 

The American & Western economies are so far gone, profits can no longer be left to the vagaries of competition, markets, price discovery... capitalism. That's all unacceptable. 

 

Monopoly of essential goods and services, privatization of essential public services... like medicine and healthcare... guarantee profits (barring collapse of the entire system).  And all are highly detrimental to a functioning economy and government.  

 

Hence, America's march to fascism: hegemonic corporate control... with CEOs and oligarchs dictating prices, supply, gov policy, the complete lack of regulatory oversight, and wages. 

 

Welcome to Totalitarianism.  One can smell it in the air, that is the breeze of abject tyranny.  What the oligarchs, w/ an Orwellian twist, call "freedom"... that is, their freedom to control, dominate, and exploit, manipulate, and mold citizens throughout the West. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2025