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Friday, August 5, 2022

Thanks for the Memories…

My fellow Americans, on Saturday, at my direction, the United States successfully concluded an airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed the emir of al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

- Remarks by President Biden

By Gregg Wall (8-5-2022)

It was a strange week, particularly for U.S. foreign policy, but across the board. There was something in the air… and not just death dealing heat and smoke as America burns. Perhaps it was that last glimmer, the fading twilight of the American Century, and how we threw it all away on endless wars, greed, hubris, and abject stupidity. I’m reluctant to use that last word, but what else would you call it? The malaise… our failed leadership, the sense that nobody is minding the store over the last four decades.

You know, it’s the free market.

What triggered it, a mourning for what might have been? For me anyway, it was the announcement by POTUS Biden that America had, two decades later, used a drone to eliminate OBL’s right hand man, Ayman al-Zawahiri. There was some ready comparisons between Obama striking down OBL, over ten years ago; but it all fell flat and short.

Unlike Obama, who saw his public approval rating soar, after killing OBL, Biden will, likely, receive no similar bump. So Biden got the bad guy. Or rather, the US military - our trillion dollar, plus, per annum, military & national security state - our military & national security state that receives more funding than the next ten nations combined – more than two decades later – finally, got the bad man. What, some twenty trillion later? And how much went to private contractors to fight our endless wars… $7 trillion? Does anyone really know … given black budgets, the fact that the Pentagon – the Deep State – can’t be audited, and the ability of the Federal Reserve to print money on a whim?

Of course, it was all gross overkill. As I have written before, trillions and trillions of American taxpayer money wasted, for want of two well placed sniper’s bullets. And what did the American people get in return? Certainly not greater national security, but catastrophic national debt and endless austerity. No first-rate health care for you, American children, no free college for you… we had to waste trillions on a lie, that POTUS Bush and Dick Cheney propagated at the U.N., via Colin Powell. And for what again? Oil profits, greed, stock market returns, congressional kickbacks, to protect Middle East oil assets, and by the looks of things, presently… so we can torch the planet. Nice.

Thousands of U.S. troops dead for a lie and so generals, congress, MIC contractors, Private Equity, and Wall St could become rich on war profits. Absolutely deplorable and disgusting. And of course, there’s the hundreds of thousands of dead civilians and the Middle East dictators we propped up. The galling callousness with which Senators and psychopaths in congress send these troops into harm’s way… not to protect America, but to enrich commercial interests and themselves, again and again. While Americans live in poverty in our failed globalized, neoliberal economy. The more you know, the more you realize Americans are systematically preyed upon, by a vampire elite (from every conceivable angle imaginable).

We are all covered in blood now… every single American. We keep voting these two failed parties into office, the same hacks into office, again and again. It’s revolting. Every other November the two parties give us that Faustian bargain: platitudes, hope, the possibility of real change… and every November we fall for it. The same pack of lies, the political minuet, and as soon as they are in, it rapidly devolves into that same tired Washington soap opera. Endless welfare for billionaires, multinationals, Wall St, and War contractors. And the political elites - and their billionaire donors - show absolutely nothing but contempt and disdain for the American people. The public, the rubber stamp has served its purpose and now, it’s time for the oligarchy to reign. The exception, the Christian Taliban get their guns & theocracy; progressives get zero.

And America’s enemies are emboldened… Putin… since attacking the Ukraine, has only grown more powerful, the Ruble stronger, the war shows no signs of ebbing, Europe is on its knees thanks to Russian gas, and Putin’s people aren’t suffering. But the Ukraine already looks like the same haunted landscape from every other war America has had a hand in, since the end of the Cold War: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

Which brings up to the Speaker’s well-timed visit to Taiwan. Why now? With all that America has on its plate, from COVID and monkey pox to the Ukraine, a failing democracy, catastrophic national debt, systemic racism, and widespread child poverty. Dare we bring up our lousy health care system, soaring inflation, and pending recession? Why now?

And of course, the obvious… Taiwan is the center of the universe for chip manufacturing. That’s why the speaker went. You know, chip & semiconductor manufacturing (that goes into nearly every product and service support known to humanity). Which thanks to our failed globalization & neoliberal paradigm – and the greatness that is greed and ‘market rule’ – America’s eminentos wisely offshored to the hottest spot on the globe. An island nation that is America’s new front in our fantastic, shiny, sparkly Cold War.

(Because Russia & the Ukraine simply was not enough… we had to pick a fight with China, that lays claim to Taiwan. Nancy would see to it.)

Chip manufacturing... that Congress spent tens of billions on just this week, under the Chips Act, to bribe the same pack of twisted billionaires and Silicon Valley elite to return manufacturing - of said chips - to U.S. shores. No, you really can’t make this stuff up. Absolutely, insane.

What are the odds? Hazard a guess… there’s no accountability in the Chips Act? Zero. No conditions, no caveats? Spend the money on yourself chip billionaires, get that fourth yacht, pick up that third wife, purchase that island nation you’ve always dreamed of… just be sure and kick a little back to team, Chucky, Joe, and Nancy? If past is prologue that has certainly been true of nearly every other corporate welfare package that has sailed through congress, within recent memory. No restraints, no guardrails, all love.

And to think… America had it all with the collapse of the Soviet Union. And in thirty years’ time, we’ve become just another banana republic, a debtor nation, with only one idea governing our gerontocracy & kleptocracy, that is greed. Greed, oceans of blood, and a complete lack of accountability.

What an epic disaster.

(In fairness, this doesn’t all fall on President Biden… he’s just the last one to fall into a deck chair, as the music stopped, and the iceberg hit. To his credit, Biden did pull the U.S. out of Afghanistan and that has to be the bravest thing I’ve seen from any U.S. president, since the planes flew into the World Trade Center. For America, going to war is easy; it’s getting out that’s the hard part. Kudos to POTUS Biden for getting that right.)

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

Saturday, July 23, 2022

Disarray, Entropy, & Revolution

His record is not without controversy. In Italy and later, as a vice chairman for Goldman Sachs in Europe, Mr. Draghi was a proponent of nations and other institutions like pension funds using derivatives to more efficiently manage their liabilities. In some cases, many experts now contend, these transactions helped mask the finances of Greece and Italy before those nations were allowed into the euro.

- Can Super Mario Save the Day for Europe? - NY Times

By Gregg Wall (7-23-2022)

Like a corpse festering in the road, everyone can see the failure that is libertarian industrial policy, everyone can smell the problem that is neoliberalism, but few leaders, if any, want to address or remove the problem… especially the privileged and the powerful that feed off & have grown catastrophically wealthy off a zombie economic model.

In rapid succession they are falling… the old guard, the authors & cheerleaders of a failed neoliberal, globalist paradigm.

Merkel and the CDU lost last year;

PM Johnson and a Brexit strategy, designed to appeal to the baser demons of Great Britain, is out;

Shinzo Abe, former PM of Japan, ultra-nationalist, recently gunned down;

Macron… recently lost a legislative majority.

Draghi, the banker, who was installed in Italy, not even elected… appears headed for the exits; and

Biden is failing miserably, along with Democrats & the U.S. Congress.

At the risk of being direct, it appears that we have a full house of failure. Fate, poker -- and a spate of failed G7 leaders wedded to corruption & greed as their driving industrial policy -- it seems, are not without a cruel sense of irony.

None of this is by accident. The pandemic - and the fallout from same - continues to reveal all. The legacy of the aforementioned generation of leaders is that they oversaw a massive transfer of wealth, and a massive accumulation of wealth into the hands of a few… transferred from citizens, future generations, & nation-states… accruing to banks, billionaires, multinationals and oligarchs. Neoliberalism – aka laissez-faire – means anything goes for the exceptionally wealthy, especially if they donated/kicked back to the corrupt centrist, corporatist political parties throughout the West. But it wasn’t enough to just bailout the oligarchy, it wasn’t enough to make them arrogant & wealthy beyond all measure… citizens and labor must be habitually put down, preyed upon, and attacked relentlessly.

In the U.S., in its most extreme form, we can see neoliberalism at its very worst with Biden attacking consumers & labor – the demand side of the equation – with austerity, higher interest rates, a regressive tax code, and reneging upon his campaign commitments (designed to address gross inequality and structural defects w/in the U.S. economy). Simultaneously, Biden has done absolutely nothing to address the key supply side feature, or component, of inflation (aka consumer price gouging): big oil, billionaires, cartels, monopolies, and Wall St. The biggest drivers of unscrupulous profit taking being food and fuel. Meanwhile, Europe’s centrist, corporatist leadership got in bed with a fossil fuels despot under globalism… and now, European leaders have adopted the Jekyll & Hyde persona of begging Putin for more gas, while sending verbal support and weapons to Putin’s latest target, the Ukraine.

The entire laissez-faire paradigm is rotted through. The more greed rules, the more a predatory few accumulate power & wealth, the more disarray, entropy, and potentially cataclysmic failure sets in. And no leader, that I’m aware of, is talking seriously about the 800-pound gorilla in the room, the Climate Crisis. Carbon capture & credits, ESG, Net-zero have all been revealed to be more of the industry self-regulation – and Wall St. speculation - that placed the world into its present mess.

Citizens, labor, and voters know it and they are reacting by kicking centrist and corporatist parties out of power, when and where they can. But the system is so corrupt, so entirely rigged, they are often forced to pivot to political parties or alternatives that are also centrist, corporatist. Those parties that aren’t initially centrist, corporatist all too often rapidly sellout and become co-opted by coalition and oligarchy. Money contaminates the entire process, causing many citizens to lose faith in democracy.

One of the more interesting topics in the U.S., over the last twenty years, concerns the nation’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence, which holds up equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as sacrosanct, as inalienable rights & truths. The fact that America is about as far removed from these ideals as imaginable is no accident and speaks to the gross corruption & structural defects seen throughout the U.S. economy and government.

But the ideal of equality seems particularly loathed by the reactionary, the privileged, and the powerful. At issue, does America insist upon equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? As equality of opportunity is entirely cancelled, by captured & corrupt federal and state governments, and billionaires & monopolies that have wired and own every aspect of the economy and public policy… the only alternative, the only real option is equality of outcome.

That is, the entire libertarian experiment is so tyrannical, that a basic standard of care must be provided for all American citizens, by birthright. And in accordance with the nation’s founding document.

The alternative, it appears, is nothing less than disarray, entropy, and revolution.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2022

Friday, July 8, 2022

Econ 101: Monopoly

Outside of the public utilities field, monopolies are rare in the United States. One reason is that federal antitrust laws generally prohibit monopolization.

As a result of federal antitrust laws, most of the monopolies of the United States are now regulated monopolies. The price of their products and certain other aspects of their business are controlled by various levels of government. These monopolies are usually allowed to exist because of their substantial economies of scale.

By Gregg Wall (7-8-2022)

All right, we need to make this short today. Temptation is everywhere… the vodka is whispering sweet nothings from the freezer, there’s a box of maduros close by – that I’ve told my doctor I haven’t touched in years (almost entirely true), and sweet, sweet legal Canadian bud and edibles are in the drawer next to me. In the distance, the Calgary Stampede. Get thee behind me, Satan.

It's been an interesting two weeks, notably the pissing match between Jeffrey Bezos, Big Oil & Gas and the President of the United States caught my attention. Seems that Mr. Bezos and Big Oil & Gas didn’t like the POTUS - and/or staff - using the bully pulpit to educate consumers on how Big Oil was ripping off Americans at the pump. The billionaire and Big Oil suggested the president, and/or staff, go take an Econ 101 course on markets.

I don’t know what Econ course Mr. Bezos took … but this - then Republican - attended the University of Texas San Antonio and Austin, from ’82 through ’86. Back then, we were taught that cartels & monopolies were about as close as one could get to communism without becoming the devil or Joseph Stalin. My professors were clear on the topic, and I believe National Review and William F. Buckley were too (which at that time, I read religiously). Absolutely key, the comparison between communism and monopoly is an axiomatic truth since both economic models call upon placing the means of production into a despot’s hands. I can think of no more apt comparison or description, than between billionaire, American despots… and Joseph Stalin & Soviet dictators. There’s a reason why Russia had all these oligarchs floating around, after the fall of the Soviet Union… it was a very smooth transition to place the means of production, and state assets, from one despotic regime to another.

In short, monopolies are communism by private proxy, that is to say authoritarian. That’s why, once upon a time in 1982, the US social compact said that any monopoly that existed was subject to very heavy control & regulation by the state, to ensure Americans were not ripped off by robber barons & utilities.

Simply put, economic tyranny always leads to political tyranny. And cartels and monopolies are tyranny defined, because they all too often end up - left unchecked & unregulated - exacting a predatory tax upon the consumer and labor. That is why the only path to social justice is via economic justice.

So what happened between 1982, when I started attending college, and today, where we have billionaires yelling at the POTUS for not bowing to monopolistic corruption, decay, and ruin?

Well, Americans had forty years of supply-side nonsense crammed down our throats; forty years of trickle-down tax policies; we have had thirty years of Clintonian neoliberalism and Larry Summers; we’ve suffered endless Wall St bailouts; and trillions of dollars of wealth transferred from the American taxpayer to billionaires, oligarchs, and Wall St. Along with an unprecedented transfer of wealth, the national debt rose, catastrophically. The national debt was 1.4 trillion in 1982, today it’s 30 plus trillion. (Imagine, President Reagan wringing his hands over a 1.4 trillion-dollar national debt? I remember it well.) We saw the arrival of private equity, the destroyer of businesses, innovations, jobs, and opportunity; along with all that cheap money, printed up by the FED, we’ve had unprecedented economic consolidation and the formation of cartels & monopolies in industry after industry.

And the price for all this was only the impoverishment of Americans, endless austerity, and the elimination of the middle class.

Companies no longer existed to serve Americans, they were there to serve, exclusively, management and shareholders. With the transfer of wealth came an explosion of billionaires, from only thirteen in 1982 to in excess of seven hundred American billionaires today. What a scam.

America went from a legitimate, rational form of capitalism in 1982 … one that actually still cared about a social compact… to the most predatory form of economic fascism the world has ever seen and will likely never see again (due to its highly destructive, planet killing nature). After the Soviet Union fell in the early 90s, America’s plutocrats felt liberated, unconstrained, and used their wealth to capture: academia, economics, government, the MSM, politicians, and think tanks. Now, all the experts and talking heads would sing from the same greed-based hymnal: the supremacy of markets uber alles and of ultimate importance, the economy and economics taught strictly from the vantage point of capital, shareholders, and the supply-side. Screw the public & the public good.

Labor didn’t even register, in fact it was to be crushed and put down, jobs and the economy to be offshored along with the tax base. After all, American labor was a threat to profit maximization and American labor was far too costly, vis-à-vis global labor. Market rule and commodification said that labor costs should be equal globally… so Asian & Indian labor must not be lifted up, American labor must be put down, wages must stagnate. And indeed, they did.

So yes, Mr. Bezos… yes, Mr. Planet Killing Big Oil … we did take Econ 101. And yes, we can remember a time when the wise words of Messrs. Hayek & Smith were still heeded… with the simple admonishment that capitalism – rather than serve the public – can easily metastasize into that greatest of tyrannies: cartel and monopoly. Separately, monopoly isn’t the only tyranny. The dual side of monopoly is … monopsony, which attacks labor, suppliers, and vendors. Let us all remember that to attack labor is to attack the consumer.

And finally, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Oil… there is no market when it is dominated by one, two, and three players (or any number of members from a cartel) … there is only looting and stealing. And Goddess save humanity if said monopoly uses cost inputs subject to Wall St speculation, because then the economy & public really takes a bath. I believe that’s called demand destruction.

Politicians, thankfully, are beginning to address the scam. It’s not effective enough to address rampant consumer price gouging with state aid, which inevitably ends up in said monopoly’s bottom line. No, that only emboldens the thief. Crucially, it’s important to do both … help the consumer with aid… and also tackle the monopoly head on. And that means, if the industry/monopolist refuses to compete, or accept price controls, the state itself must enter the market & provide direct competition.

Antitrust enforcement and windfall profits taxation are also remedies to monopoly's reign of terror.