A Golden Curtain has descended across the West…?
“I’d
rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people
listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard
University.” – William F. Buckley
By J.M. Hamilton (7-4-2011)
Per
the NY Times obituary on Mr. Buckley, we the get the following: “All
great biblical stories begin with Genesis,” George Will wrote in National
Review in 1980. “And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater,
and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before
there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and
the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration.”
To
which this blog responds, what hath Mr. Buckley wrought?
As
the political architect of the Reagan Revolution, the father of the paleo-Tea
Bag movement (i.e. political conservatism), and after more than a quarter
century of free market ideology and deregulation, Mr. Buckley, presumably,
might have some misgivings about the way things have turned out.
One thing is for sure, there were some positives about the man, and his
political knowledge and debating skills were something to be feared. In
reading the above quote, one wonders if Mr. Buckley was more upbeat about the
prospect of the first 400 people within the Boston phone directory running the
affairs of the nation, or was he merely slamming the Harvard
faculty? My guess is a little of the both, because say what you
will about the man, Mr. Buckley generally argued from a position of Christian
altruism, the likes of which are rarely, if ever, heard in present Republican
Party leadership. I would like to believe Mr. Buckley, a well known
Libertarian, was also a populist at heart, who genuinely believed that his
brand of free market ideology would be a boon to all.
History
has yet to write Mr. Buckley’s final epitaph; the political and economic wave
he helped to unleash, more like a tsunami, is still very much with us – its
troubled waters have yet to fully recede. Still one can’t help but admire
the man; and at the end the day, he was not a doctrinaire adherent to the
political and economic ideology he helped mold and shape. After
all, any Republican who was not in favor of the Iraq war and who was not a fan
of President Bush (W.) certainly deserves our acknowledgement, if not our
respect; and any man who would sail into international waters to smoke a joint,
so as to avoid breaking U.S. law certainly is, if nothing else, interesting.
Damn,
I miss Firing Line.
But
we move on, and deal with the wreckage of our present economy, and
what a week it was. Bloomberg released a story highlighting
that the revolving door between the most nefarious bank known to mankind,
Goldman Sachs, and Western Governments continues unabated. Goldman not
content to rule the known financial universe must also control the highest
chambers of government and central banks. Proving that we do, indeed,
live under a bankocracy. Mr. Forsyth of Barron’s Magazine
wrote, if I may have license to paraphrase, that the banks of the E.U.,
particularly those in France and Germany, are being propped up on the shoulders
of the poor of Greece and what remains of their middle class, come to think of
it not unlike what has transpired in the U.S. since 2008.
Austerity, a shrinking economy, and low employment prospects are what await
Greece and the West, that is as long as our political elite remain slavishly
devoted to propping up the banks.
And
it doesn’t look like it’s going to get better any time soon. Christian
Lagarde will head up the IMF. And while it is wonderful that a woman will
finally run the IMF, she most certainly will continue the policies that have
indentured 99% of us to the banks, many of which are insolvent. And Tim
Geithner, it appears, will stay on at the Treasury for the “foreseeable
future,” perhaps the worst news we received all week.
Charles
Munger, the Vice Chairmen of Berkshire Hathaway (the bastion of all things Ayn
Rand) had an epiphany of Tourettes, when he offered up the following gems, as
reported in Bloomberg:
“The bubble in America was caused by some
combination of megalomania, insanity and evil in, I would say, investment
banking, mortgage banking.”
“Alan Greenspan is a smart man,” Munger said.
“He just totally overdosed on Ayn Rand at a young age.”
“I would guess that Dick Fuld has not a single
ounce of contrition wherever he sits today.”
Mr. Munger, the story goes on to report, is a
fan of Elizabeth Warren.
My
guess is the “Morning with Charlie” show will be permanently cancelled.
Mr. Munger is a reported Republican, and the Republican Leadership must be
foaming at the mouth over these “revelations.”
Might
have Mr. Buckley have also thought along the lines of Mr. Munger had he lived
through our present financial crisis? Quite possibly so.
But
are the Democrats really any better? This week we learn in the NY
Times that Democrats and the Obama administration were about to sell out the
American worker once again, with proposed passage of several Bush era free
trade agreements; that is as long as Republicans were going to aid and abet
this catastrophe by expanding the welfare state for all the displaced American
workers, who would lose their jobs as a result of the wage, tax, and regulatory
arbitrage that is “free trade.” Of course, as this blog has written there
is absolutely nothing free about “free trade.” A friendly note to the
Democratic Party: America needs jobs, not an expansion of the deficit and
more welfare programs, so that your party can appease the chamber of commerce,
multi-national manufacturing and banking interests.
Do
you ever get the feeling that we live in a one party state?
With both parties pandering to Wall Street, both parties propping up the banks,
at the expense of us all…. If you think about it, we really aren’t that
dissimilar to the Greeks who felt betrayed by their own elected officials this
week, or the upset German populace, who will now have to bailout E.U. periphery
nations, not to mention their own banks, again and again and again….
Of
course the banks, always several steps ahead, are international in scope, hire
the best and brightest, make them rich, and turn them out to run our
“democracies,” perhaps to circle back again for more tax payer funded
loot. Meanwhile the G20 and the IMF (and I might add Basel), as written
about by Barry Eichengreen in voxeu.org, just can’t seem to get
it together long enough to thwart the interests of the Wall Street cartel,
always dissolving into petty recriminations, disputes, and bickering, not
unlike a bad marriage counseling session, as Mr. Eichengreen observes
On
March 5th 1946, Winston Churchill gave a famous speech in
Fulton, Missouri. At the time the speech was dismissed as more war
mongering from the often bellicose and belligerent Mr. Churchill; but Mr.
Churchill turned out to be quite right because an Iron Curtain
was indeed descending across the continent of Europe, and much of the world,
that would form the basis of the cold war for the next forty years or
more. Behind the curtain was the unfathomable, but we now know, as Mr.
Buckley may have observed, it was one vast gulag archipelago, complete with
slave labor, backward and underperforming economies, and absolutely miserable
human right conditions. Most importantly, personal, economic, religious
and political freedom were crushed under the boot heals of communist masters.
It took the likes of Messrs. Churchill, Reagan, Buckley and Truman, with a
whole lot of help and sacrifice from the West, to bring down the Soviet empire
(in of all places a small country at the cross roads of the world,
Afghanistan).
Today,
if Mr. Churchill were alive might he warn of a Golden Curtain
descending across the Western democracies? This curtain is
made of gold for our elected officials, and the insiders and banking interests
protected from within. Outside the curtain, the middle class is crumbling,
unemployment and inflation are rising, and U.S. and European economies are in
shambles. And the liberty we take for granted is under threat from
within. In Greece, and coming soon to a country near you, order and peace
are at a premium, as are jobs. Crony capitalism, like some defunct Soviet
era economy, is often how business gets done; likewise Monopolies, or put
another way socialism by private proxy, prey upon the population with taxation
without representation. And seemingly no elected official or appointee
has the political will to, consistently, say or do what is right. Where
is FDR, a traitor to his class, when you need him? Where is Teddy
Roosevelt the trust buster? Where is Harry Truman?
Political
economist will tell you that black markets are dangerous things because they
offer unregulated and unsafe products, and make obscene profits, which can in
turn be used to subvert democratic governments, institutions, and elected
officials. But Mexican drug cartels cannot hold a candle to the banking
interests who traffic in the ultimate narcotic, money! It is banking and
shadow banking, armed with a Citizens United supreme court
decision and the unlimited flow of money, that has woven the golden curtain
that separates us from the our elected leaders, and perverts our democratic
institutions.
P.S.
On this Fourth of July weekend, a few lines from
Mr. Jefferson, who had quite a disdain for monarchs, like the Kings who rule us
all on Wall Street:
“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts,
burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.”- Declaration of
Independence
“A Prince whose character is thus marked by every
act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” –
Declaration of Independence
“He has combined with others to subject us to a
jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws;
giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For
imposing Taxes on us without our Consent (In the modern day this would be
monopolistic profits and usurious interest rates).” - Declaration of
Independence
“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking
establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle
of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but
swindling futurity on a large scale.”- Jefferson’s letter to the political
philosopher, John Taylor.
Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2013
