Give Thanks… Not Hate

Give Thanks…  Not Hate

“I don’t want to energize the group, and I disavow the group," Trump told Baquet. "It’s not a group I want to energize, and if they are energized, I want to look into it and find out why.”

"I disavow and condemn them," Trump told Times reporters.

-       POTUS –Elect Trump, Disavows the Alt-Right, Politico

By J.M. Hamilton (11-25-2016)

Last year at this time, JMH wrote a piece on the politics of resentment that appeared to be driving the Trump campaign.

Many of us have, recently, encountered the anger, the fear, and the hatred in news accounts, and witnessed it in our daily lives…. An unacceptable level of rage, and sometimes overt racism, directed all too often at immigrants and non-white Americans.

To quote POTUS Trump this misguided/misdirected anger should be “condemned” and “disavowed.”  Hatred of any American – due to the circumstances of their birth (skin color, race, creed, gender, sexual orientation) – is not only morally repugnant but is Un-American.

Any Neo-Nazi movement or Alt-Right movement should be stomped out and crushed; and in fact if the misguided and the nescient and the fatuous serve any purpose, it is to remind us that hatred still exists and must be eliminated.

And how do you crush the fear and resentment that spawns jealousy & rage spilling over into hatred?   It’s done through education.

Too many white Americans are not only afraid for their jobs and their social standing (that fear is legitimate), but they are deathly afraid that a fellow American – often a person of far less fortunate circumstances than themselves – might be getting something for free (that fear is not legitimate).

Now there are economic arguments to be made about waves of immigrants & refugees entering into a country so rapidly, that they crush the social safety net, create too big of a burden on society & the government, and the plutocracy’s favorite, suppress wages.   But race, and hatred of our fellow man, has no business entering into that discussion.

Unless you are a Native-American, and particularly if your hide is white, you are an immigrant or are a descendant of immigrants.  In short, the U.S. is a nation of immigrants.  It’s what makes this country great.

As for fear of economic & political disenfranchisement – my white brothers & sisters – your fear is not unfounded but it is, often, misdirected.  Don’t fear the 1 in 5 children born into poverty in this country.  Don’t begrudge the poor kid, at the public school, who may qualify for a subsidized lunch.

They are not your enemy, and they certainly aren’t the “takers.”

Our enemy is a hyper-rapacious plutocracy that has co-opted, and owns & operates, the government for its own ends.  This plutocracy, oligarchy of billionaires… siphons off hundreds of billions of dollars from Federal and State governments, annually: in fraudulent contracts; regulatory capture; bailouts; tax loopholes galore; free money from the Federal Reserve; passing the social costs of their products onto the taxpayer & future generations; credit card wars & failed nation building exercises; and government privatization (e.g. defense & private prison contractors) that creates perverse incentives against society, increases the national debt - exponentially, and results in the ripping off of taxpayers; etc, etc, etc.

But don’t take my word for it, take the king daddy of crony-capitalism’s word for it, Mr. Warren Buffett:  Class warfare, per Mr. Buffett, is being fought in the U.S., and the billionaire class has won hands down.

And I can assure you, Mr. & Mrs. John Q. White-American, as much as you may think you’re going to get rich in your lifetime, and you have a Goddess given right to become rich in your lifetime…. For all too many of us, our odds of getting rich are about as great as winning the lottery.  And those odds are growing worse, the more the elite export jobs offshore, via free trade agreements, and the more the oligarchy wraps its tentacles around the federal & state governments.  These bastards own the politicians; politicians that should be serving America and ordinary Americans.

Our anger and resentment needs be directed into running for office, showing up at the polls, volunteering for campaigns, and staying informed: 24/7/365.  That’s where our resentment belongs, and that resentment, that anger, needs to be channeled into activism: particularly, at showing up at rallies, and volunteering, for candidates that will support your interests, not the 1%. 

The plutocracy, and their minions – the political class - thrive and feed off of our ignorance & apathy.  And they feast upon it, like a Thanksgiving Turkey.  And whatever ethical or moral issues you may possess about not taking money from the government, the elite and the wealthy, trust me, hold no such reservations.  In fact, it's why they are so wealthy. 

There’s one more reason Mr. & Mrs. John Q. American that you should not resent poor Americans who need assistance.  One of the fallouts of crony-capitalism, particularly free trade uber alles, globalization, robots, automation, and AI is that there will be fewer and fewer jobs.

Even if Mr. Trump is successful - and many of us are praying for his success in rolling back highly harmful free trade agreements, that have gutted the American Dream – the intermediate to long term trend for jobs & opportunity is on the decline.  Even if – as JMH has proscribed – we break up all the job killing cartels & monopolies, automation & AI will take many jobs away. 

If not yours than almost certainly your daughters, sons, or grand-kids.  Lawyers on the street, truck drivers unemployed – due to automation & computers?  Get used to it.  Welcome to the 21^st Century. 

And this issue will likely be the greatest debate in coming decade(s), how should the wealth and bounty – in our newly automated/labor lite economy - be divided up?  The ownership class, the rapacious plutocracy…. Who built their billions off exploiting your labor, your government, to their own ends.... will, likely, insist that the spoils go exclusively to them.  The public, on the other hand, (who built this country, gave their lives in foreign wars, supported – w/ their tax dollars - the infrastructure & schools that made the plutocracy fabulously wealthy) may want a seat at the boardroom table, a share in the capital & profits, and a guaranteed basic income.

Hey, if the Fed can print up trillions to bailout Wall Street Robber Barons, it can print up trillions for a guaranteed basic income.  We merely, need to make sure that aggregate demand does not outstrip aggregate supply, which could lead to catastrophic inflation. 

Is it doable?  Answer:  Not w/out a paradigm shift in thinking, not w/out complications/adjustments, but as sure as the sun rises in the East, you can bet on it.  In fact, Americans should insist upon it.  The key to unlocking the door to a government that works for ordinary Americans is to banish money from politics.  Money does not equal free speech.  

No.  Money in politics equals bribery and corruption.

White America is just now waking up to the fact that the deck is stacked against them, and they are being royally screwed.  So far, too many Americans have been fooled into thinking that their fellow American, often a person of color or humble origins, is the issue. 

Who benefits from 99% division & distraction (and yes, in some instances, racism)?  Answer:  The Plutocracy/ The Oligarchy/The Billionaire class.

Yes indeed, our Whitey privilege cards have been revoked, from the day laborer to the professions.  Those cards are not being revoked by the disenfranchised and the powerless… they are being revoked by the Oligarchy (and think tanks, MSM, and academics owned by the Plutocracy), who have been slitting this nation's collective throat for the last 36 years (since the dawn of the Reagan revolution, and by a neoliberal/Ayn Rand economic policy run amok).

Don’t worry about your neighbor getting free stuff, because you & your college degree(s), my friend, are likely to be the next in line.

Act, think, and educate yourself, politically & accordingly. 

The futures and lives of you, your children, and their progeny may depend upon it.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2016

Won't Get Fooled Again?

Won't Get Fooled Again?

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss

- The Who, lyrics from Won’t Get Fooled Again

By J.M. Hamilton (11-13-2016)

If the greatest trick the devil ever played on the world was convincing the earth that he did not exist, the greatest trick POTUS – Elect Trump ever played on the American people was convincing the United States he was a populist.  You have to give the devil his due, Mr. Trump made a believer of a great many people.

Both candidates, Clinton & Trump, define the establishment.  Candidates who made their way in the world, not by the sweat of their brow or slogging it out in the trenches day after day (one paycheck away from humility), but rather, via their elite connections.  Both Trump and Hillary are mired in crimes, misdemeanors, personal peccadillos, and moral & social outrages. 

So what ultimately, was the difference between the two candidates?  Trump – like Sanders - said the system was rigged.  And a truer statement never passed through a politician’s lips.

It struck a chord.  Mrs. Clinton, on the other hand, sullied by decades of scandal, never acknowledged what the people wanted to hear.   Our POTUS-Elect acknowledged the corruption, embraced it, reveled in it, and told the American people that he was now a reformed man, who would be fighting for them.  Trump, the populist, was on the people’s side.  When FDR hired Joe Kennedy, a notorious Wall Street speculator, to head the SEC, President Roosevelt was said to have quipped: It takes a thief to catch a thief.

And under that premise - mixed in, apparently, with measures of misogyny, racism, and xenophobia - our new POTUS was elected this week.

How did the MSM, big data, and the pollsters blow this?  Quite simply, trapped in there own bubble, the elite believe their own bullshit.  In an endless feedback loop, we were told by the eminentos, and talking heads, that the alleged progressive, HRC, would win by a considerable margin.  To wake up Wednesday morning at 1:00 AM, and to see the look in the eyes of the MSM – on all the major networks – was worth thousand(s) of words.   Once again the elite and experts blew it.

Had they read J.M. Hamilton, here & here, perhaps they might have been more clued in.

The Dems failure goes back to the Clinton Administration, deregulation, the crony/insider economy, and 35 years of neoliberal doctrine - where the elite and the bigs get bigger, and everyone else gets trampled under foot.  More recently, POTUS Obama walked into the White House in 2008, running on a platform of change, and immediately set about surrounding himself with the same establishment insiders, who had brought the nation to ruin.  Mr. Geithner immediately comes to mind.  

Instead of taking care of a ruined nation and its citizens, POTUS Obama bailed out the Wall Street banks and the elite – bank bailouts that are on-going to this very day.  Under POTUS Obama the insiders became wealthier, more concentrated, and their power grew.  Entire industries are now dominated by cartel and monopoly: great for the 1%, and horrific for consumers, the free market, entrepreneurs, and labor.  Obama originally ran against job killing free trade, but quickly became – in recent years – its greatest advocate.  The President ran on pulling the nation out of a failed Iraq nation building exercise, and like Nixon before him, dallied & delayed on the troop pullout.  And today, the U.S. still finds itself stuck in the Middle East’s briar patch.  Worst of all -while the American people suffered and were evicted from their homes w/out prospects or jobs - the President wasted a House & Senate majority on the Affordable Care Act, which is crony capitalism defined. 

Obama made a deal with the devil to get ACA through.  He assured every medical cartel and pharmaceutical monopoly, that the ACA would not use government leverage & power to rein in industry monopolistic pricing power.  This year, it hit the fan.  In the midst of the election, double-digit ACA premium hikes.  Giving ammunition to Obama’s, and his surrogate’s (HRC), enemies.

Not so ironically, POTUS Trump – the great populist – appears to be already making the same mistakes as his predecessor.  Trump is already surrounding himself with Washington insiders, back-pedalling on his many campaign promises, and going full bore establishment.  (Word has it that Trump’s staff has already reached out to Mr. Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan, to head up Treasury.)  K-Street lobbyist are in overdrive and licking their chops; Mr. Trump (aka Mr. Establishment) is someone the stuffed suits & bagmen can work with.

If Mr. Trump reneges on his pledge to the American people, he will surely be a one term POTUS.   As for the wall that Mexico will build, or throwing Hillary in jail, the latest is “forget about it,” not a priority.  Tax reform benefiting the 1% is on.  Crony-insider appointments to the Trump administration are on.  Bank deregulation – the very dereg that placed the nation into the last economic Hiroshima… On.

The return of Glass Steagall (banking regulation that separated commercial banking from bank investment houses, and prohibited commercial banks from gambling w/ taxpayer money) - a plank in the Republican platform & something Mr. Trump ran on - suddenly, conveniently, MIA.  

As further evidence of Mr. Trumps return to the establishment fold take a look at the stock market.  After the futures market went into a tailspin early Wednesday morning, when Trump’s win had become a fact - the market quickly recovered and range bound indexes, particularly blue chips, hit new highs throughout the week.  All of this after the Wall Street analysts assured us a Trump victory, a certifiable Black Swan event, would crush markets.

For many the most horrifying prospect of all, the campaign promise Trump most likely will fulfill:  Placing backward social conservatives on the Supreme Court – who will legislate Sharia law from the bench - hangs in the air like the plague.  For a taste of things to come, look to VP Pence, who is already shaping up to be the Trump administration’s Chancellor Cheney.  When the SCOTUS appointments go down get ready for a return to the Dark Ages.  We’re talking Torquemada/Scalia types. 

With the gloom of his Presidency surrounding the country, for at least half the nation & rioting in the streets, what might Mr. Trump do to increase his prospects for a second term, assuming he wants one?  Well, he could be the populist he professed to be and actually ran on.  He could turn the free market into an economy that benefits everyone, and not just the 1%.  Let’s run down the list.  These are the issues that actually appeal to many liberals, libertarians, GOP and Dems… not so much, the 1%.

1)    Free trade agreements should be negotiated, and renegotiated from a bottom -up perspective, not from the 1% - down.  And since Mr. Trump is a nationalist, presumably w/ respect for U.S. sovereignty, extra-judicial courts created to protect multinational interests – contained w/in free trade agreements - should be eliminated.  Above all, these agreements should be negotiated w/ full transparency and in the sanitizing light of day.

2)    Deregulation that enshrines existing monopolies & cartels, that leaves workers, the consumer, and the environment unprotected should be avoided; deregulation that passes social costs onto the taxpayer has become another metaphor for corporate welfare.  Some of the worst abuses in capitalism have been as a result of dereg.  (See the Clinton administration, the removal of Glass Steagall, swaps & derivatives dereg, and the resulting ’08 economic collapse).  Dereg for the sake of quarterly returns, that leaves social costs to be picked up by future generations, is a proven abject failure.  Abandon Dodd-Frank, regulation written by and for banks (causing barriers to entry), sure, but not before reinstating Glass Steagall and breaking up the Wall Street cartel.

3)    Tax Reform:  If Warren Buffett is right about anything it’s that it is obscene that he pays at a lower tax rate than his secretary.  Any tax relief/reform provided should start w/ the long-suffering middle class, who cannot escape or dodge taxes.  End the carried interest tax loophole; end debt’s tax deductibility.  Make sure that corporations and multinationals pay taxes based upon EBITA at a rate no less than the rates the middle class is forced to endure.  It’s fair; it’s appropriate.

4)    Minimum wage:  Not a favorite among libertarians and the Austrian school of economics crowd.  The reality is that corporations – who pay a non-living wage – and rely upon the state to keep their employees afloat – are socialist and relying on the state to subsidize their income statements.  In brief, corps that pay a non-living wage are subsidizing their earnings, by using the state to keep their labor pool alive.  End corporate welfare; end crony capitalism; support the minimum wage. 

5)    Mr. Trump was right to denounce the groupthink in the MSM, and threaten the proposed and actual mergers of  ATT/TimeWarner and Comcast/NBC Universal, respectively.  But the Trump administration should not stop there.  In order for capitalism to triumph over crony-capitalism, existing cartels and monopolies must be broken up.  Breaking up predatory monopolies is pro-free market, and it’s pro- labor and consumer.  Breaking up monopolies, also stimulates growth in investment & innovation. 

6)    Trump, like Senator Sanders, is correct, we need to make sure our allies are covering their share of foreign policy alliance costs.  The U.S. taxpayer can no longer foot the bill for European and allies’ defense costs.  Moreover, we can no longer afford to patrol the globe, as the world’s policeman.  These costs should be picked up by the nations and multinationals, who benefit most from trade route protection.  Time to tax countries and multinationals accordingly.  If I can give Mr. Trump one word of praise, it’s a very positive development that it appears that there will be no new Cold War (only time will tell).

7)    On SCOTUS nominees let your inner Rockefeller Republican shine through… ignore Mr. Pence and his ultra conservative social inclinations, and expand your base.   There’s nothing wrong with being popular Mr. Trump, and welcoming socially moderate members to the Supreme Court will go a long ways towards expanding your support.

On a final note, one market that took a considerable hit this week was bonds.  Institutions were dumping bonds, with huge outflows.  The expectations are that Trump's tax cuts for the rich (aka Voodoo economics), and financed fiscal deficits, will lead to higher interest rates and inflation.  Breaking up monopolies and cartels, who inherently often restrict supply to increase profits (see Big Pharma), is one way to combat inflation.  Another way to combat inflation is to have the Fed engage in another round of QE, and write off a sizable chunk of the national debt.  Many other countries, around the globe, find themselves w/ considerable debt to GDP ratios. They too, would have a vested interest in having their central banks write down a sizable portion of their national debt.

With debt written down, proportionately by country, the balance of power and the economic order would be preserved.  Moreover, with national debts written down…. conservative business, economic, and political arguments for economy crippling austerity would vanish.

With Trump’s experiences with debt, his inclinations are correct.   There must be a way to write down a colossal debt load, w/out sending the economy or the dollar into a tailspin. 

The answer is the Federal Reserve.

After all, what’s the alternative … negative yields?

This is make or break time for the Trump administration.  More than a few Americans are willing to give the new POTUS the benefit of the doubt; many, on the other hand, have already written POTUS Trump off, as an unstable narcissist, who will line his pockets while in office.

Like Obama before him, who Trump takes into his cabinet, who he allows himself to be guided by, the decisions he makes, and programs Trump pushes in the first 100 days will make or break his presidency. 

The public is in no mood to be fooled again.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2016