As the world burns…

As the world burns… 

 

First it was the Northwest Territories dealing with wildfires that forced several small communities to be evacuated. The town of Enterprise was destroyed by a blaze while the nearby community of Hay River was emptied, but appears to have mostly emerged unscathed. But by Wednesday evening, officials ordered more than 20,000 residents of the capital city of Yellowknife to evacuate by Friday at noon. 

 

Meanwhile, in Kelowna, residents were gripped once again with fear and uncertainty as a ferocious fire, fed by strong winds and hot and dry conditions, swept to the city’s limits. It was 20 years and two days since a previous devastating fire, started by a lightning spark near Okanagan Mountain Provincial Park, forced 33,000 to evacuate and destroyed 200 homes.

 

-      Western Canada: Unrelenting wildfires threaten Kelowna and Yellowknife as evacuations continue

 

 

By Gregg Wall (8-19-2023)

 

How much longer will world leaders ignore the global – fossil fuels – crisis they are responsible for?  

 

Here in Canada, there is a full-scale meltdown underway, as Western Canada burns in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.  Tens of thousands of citizens have been ordered to evacuate, but to where?  Alberta?  The eye of the fossil fuels terror?  For a country hungry for jobs and economic opportunity, a burning nation - Canada - surely isn’t a good look.  Meanwhile, Hawaii, more specifically Maui and the town of Lahaina, has the look of a city that has been nuked.  Biden insulted the people with $700 checks and a promise to do a flyby.  And apparently, this is all politicians have to offer… the occasional band-aid, thoughts, prayers, a few words with the local mayor, governor, or provincial leader.  

 

And nothing… nada, zilch, zip, and zero.  Certainly no talk of reparations, remediation, and damages paid by Big Oil & Gas.

 

Instead, politicians, Western leaders are falling down in failure right before our very eyes: stammering, deer in the headlights, and nothing. (Check out the look a leader in NWT and Yellowknife gives PM Trudeau.)  No declaration of a climate emergency.  No declaration of war against this unholy terror.  If a foreign power had done to Hawaii and Western Canada what fossil fuels has done, and continues to do, both nations would have declared war.  But no, the Big Oil gangsters and thugs in the C-suites and Boardrooms – and their Wall St investors - get away with mass murder, buying off Western democracies, and hundreds of billions in property destruction. It’s estimated $209 billion annually in property destruction and a Harvard study has said one in five of the world’s inhabitants die, both as a direct result of fossil fuels.  Numbers, both lives and property damage, that will undoubtedly soar over time.  And fossil fuels and Wall St. makes tens of billions as America wages wars of aggression to create contrived shortages, both real & perceived.  Indeed, wars designed to manufacture energy scarcity, so the industry & Wall St speculators have every opportunity to jack up prices globally.   

 

Apparently, the unassailable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (aka property) only applies to the predatory elite.  Everybody else gets a flyby and a pat on the back, while their homes are reduced to ash, their livelihoods are stolen, and their insurance premiums skyrocket.  And the subsequent land grab ensues.

 

We are long past thinking any of this is natural, we know exactly who is responsible for pulling the trigger on a planet in flames.  Just as power companies are sued for fires in California, and maybe Hawaii, and gun manufacturers are finally being sued… Big Oil & Gas and its bondholders & shareholders must also be sued from every angle imaginable.

 

Civil charges are not enough.  And even though repugnant, far-right POTUS Biden had the audacity to tell the children they have no constitutional right to a stable environment… thankfully, there are laws against murder.  There are international laws against: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.  And let’s not think for a moment that these latter laws don’t apply to multinationals.  We typically think of crimes against humanity and war crimes as applying to nation states.  However, when multinationals buyoff Western democracies & politicians and dictate state policy, there’s little doubt that Big Oil & Gas could & should be held responsible for the crimes of a state or multiple states.  Check out the corruption in the U.S. Senate… is there any doubt who runs the Congress, the SCOTUS, and the Presidency?  That’s right… fossil fuels, the MIC, and Wall St. 

 

It is therefore, imperative, when our elected leaders fail us, for lawyers & prosecutors to wage war against CEOs, boardrooms, investors, the industry, and its representatives.  It maybe daunting… I’m sure taking on Big Tobacco and Purdue Pharma was an ordeal… but at the end of the day, what alternative do citizens around the globe have (besides general strikes & civil disobedience)?  Particularly when Western leaders continue to aid and abet these crimes and funnel endless corporate welfare and largesse in this deadly industry's direction.  Indeed, wage war on this industry’s behalf (see also Iraq).

 

Who knows, perhaps the right attorneys and prosecutors can take down ultra-corrupt political parties and politicians in the process. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023

FITCH

FITCH 

 

Fitch cut the US’s sovereign credit grade one level from AAA to AA+. The move comes just two months after it warned the rating was under threat as lawmakers flirted with default by battling over raising the nation’s debt limit.

The credit grader justified the shift by arguing the country’s finances will likely deteriorate over the next three years given tax cuts, new spending initiatives, economic shocks and repeated political gridlock.

Pushing back hours before her department is set to ramp up its borrowing to plug a ballooning budget deficit, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called the downgrade “arbitrary” and “outdated.” 

-             Fitch’s US Credit Downgrade Sparks Criticism Along With Unease, Bloomberg

 

By Gregg Wall (8-5-2023)

 

Should the Federal Reserve with their partners over at Treasury be allowed to print up $36 trillion in national debt?

 

Should monetary policy & deficit spending fund a global empire… an empire that serves the purpose of enriching a predatory few, via endless, unaudited defense spending, colonialism, and the subjugation of countries and people all over the globe (in the name of greed, resource extraction, & labor exploitation)?   

 

Should U.S. monetary policy & the national debt fund continuous Wall St bailouts, backstop the Wall St casino & billionaires… should quantitative easing and a low interest rate regime be used as a policy for providing free money welfare to Wall St banks, shadow banking, and private equity?  The free money welfare, in turn, used consolidate the economy into predatory cartels and monopolies, with dictatorial powers over the American government, prices, and wages? 

 

Should the FED and the Treasury - and fiscal and monetary policy - be key and critical in the transfer of wealth, via the US credit line, into the pockets of billionaires, day traders in the House & Senate, boardrooms & C-Suites, and Wall St.?  Further used to finance endless for-profit war and bloodshed?

 

Or perhaps, should American end these practices and use QE, MMT, and interest rate suppression for the exclusive benefit of the American people and globally, humanity? 

 

These are questions that, conveniently, go unasked and unanswered by the corporate American MSM and the corrupt mafia that makes up America’s political class, respectively.  Perhaps, the corporate media deems these questions too complex for the average American (or perhaps, they are more fearful of the reaction?) …  and yet, nearly every American understands checking accounts, net-worth, credit cards, and credit lines.  That is to say, the conversation is long overdue and need not be overly complex, especially since the American people are on the hook for fiscal and monetary policy, the fraud that transpires daily in Washington and Wall St, and the abject failure that passes for ‘independence’ at the Federal Reserve.  

 

The American people are on the hook for $36 trillion and that number is expected to skyrocket; and the American people receive absolutely nothing in return, but are incessantly preyed upon by billionaires, multinationals, their own government, and Wall St. 

 

All of which may have factored into Fitch’s decision making.  Fitch, a credit rating agency, finally blew the whistle on fiscal & monetary fraud and malfeasance, that transpires every day in the nation’s capital (since the 2008 crisis).  And the reaction is exactly what we’d expect from failed elites within the Biden Administration, who just happened to be holding the levers of government when time ran out.  It could have been Republicans.  Because both parties are responsible for the crime wave: the systemic attack upon Americans, in the name of austerity; and the endless welfare for billionaires, the MIC, multinationals, Wall St, and the oligarchy (taxpayer money that often finds itself laundered in the stock markets and kicked backed to politicians in the form of dark money, campaign contributions, buybacks, and dividends). 

 

As indicated, the outcry from self-serving elites was entirely predictable.  The often-used excuse that America – via exorbitant privilege – can endlessly print up money to pay off its debts.  If that is so, and it is true to a certain point, why not print up money for: Medicare for All; to eliminate student debt and provide free college; why not print up money to fund free lunch programs for children; why not fund abortion and birth control on demand (spending that would pay dividends for America and her economy)?  Instead of funding hell on earth: the U.S. empire and endless war, Wall St greed, an entirely corrupt & criminally negligent U.S. congress, and a grotesque & repugnant oligarchy? 

 

Gee, cast in this light, and put to a national referendum… I wonder what the American people would choose to fund, after they have been systematically ripped off, robbed, beaten, jailed by an out-of-control police state (funded by the national debt), and exploited by cartel & monopoly? 

 

Let there be no doubt, the Fitch rating will generate more discussions in Washington… but the villainy from both parties won’t talk about cutting the MIC, or endless war, or the power behind American colonial rule, the US empire, nor billionaire and Wall St. entitlements.  No, the attack will come on what precious little remains of the regulatory state (that protects hardworking Americans & our children) and the social programs that benefit the disenfranchised, the remnants of the middle class, and the poor. 

 

Like I said, America can go on printing more money to a point… until the world loses faith, until there’s another Bretton Woods, until an alternative currency, a more humane currency comes along (a time when the autocratic, dictatorial American dollar and its reign of abuse & terror ends). 

 

Whether the world fully recognizes it or not, it’s paying for exorbitant privilege... U.S. bombings, colonialism, NATO' expansionary & bellicose imperialism, paying down dollar denominated debt, and the IMF & World Bank kicking in their front doors... in ways too numerous to count.  

 

And the American people…  they pay for exorbitant privilege, exorbitant national debt & austerity with their very lives & their children’s future. 

 

As for accountability for this great evil, this curse, on perhaps, the least deserving (or is it, deserving?) of nations… a nation founded on slavery & genocide… well, we all know who is responsible.  Look no further than the FED chairs, the failed political duopoly, and the oligarchy they all report into.  And the crazy part, exorbitant privilege is a gift, a tool, and could have been a tremendous blessing, to America and the world.  It still can be but not without addressing massive structural economic, government, and political defects.

 

Secretary Yellen called the Fitch downgrade ‘arbitrary’ and ‘outdated.'  You know what’s ‘arbitrary’ and ‘outdated’ America (?)...  the Washington and Wall St crime wave, America’s predatory elite, and endless for-profit war. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023

The Politics of Greed

The Politics of Greed

Mr. Powell said earlier this month that the episode continued to exert a significant influence on his management of monetary policy.

“The taper tantrum left scars on anybody who was working at the Fed at that time,” Mr. Powell said at a joint appearance in Atlanta with Mr. Bernanke and the former Fed chairwoman Janet L. Yellen.

-      Effects of the 2013 ‘Taper Tantrum’ Linger Over Fed Policy – NY Times

 

By Gregg Wall (7-22-2023) 

 

Inflation (i.e., price gouging) has been in the news the last couple of weeks.  America’s Bureau of Labor Statistics released their numbers on July 12, and Canada released its numbers this week.  And from all the cheering you’d thought the Allied powers had just defeated Germany, but alas, it was not to be.  Inflation still soars, the core inflation figure – which conveniently enough excludes food and retail fuel prices – climbs ever higher, as does the U.S. stock market despite the obvious pain felt by the majority of Americans. Interest rates remain at a highly accommodative historical norm, and Western leaders & politicians consistently fail to address the monopolies and utilities responsible for a global pandemic of greedflation. 

 

The U.S. financial press appears in on the act… the MSM dutifully, and w/out fail, reports out the party line. Seemingly, not a single member of the MSM questions how is it, that gas prices are 50% higher than when POTUS Biden entered the White House, despite America being the most prolific producer of oil & gas on the planet.  No one questions how rents continue to soar another 7.8%, food another 5.7%... all of which comes on top of the price gouging incurred in 2020, 2021, and 2022.  In fact, if anything, profits continue to soar, as America’s boardrooms, C-suites, and monopolists pocket lower cost inputs for steeper profits margins, or in the case of Wall St banks, hoard higher interest rates.  It’s quite the rape. 

 

But despite all the high-fives in the financial media, things apparently are not well: 

 

The oft cited jobs numbers frequently fall short of expectations, as Americans increasingly find themselves in jobs that fail to pay a living wage (let alone allow them to keep up with serial price gouging). 

 

Bankruptcies are rising.  As corporate entities that gorged on free money welfare & financial engineering for years, finally have discovered debt service loads and interest rates more commensurate with their credit and underwriting risks.

 

And the ultimate bellwether on how the economy is doing, POTUS Biden continues to bottom out in the polls.   Seems that many Americans are not drinking the Kool-Aid served up by Bidenomics and members of the MSM. 

 

Hence, the fear and loathing surrounding proposals from economists… at least one suggesting the path forward should be allowing companies to gouge harder, and that the Federal Reserve’s targeted inflation rate should be allowed to climb higher, from 2% to 3%.  After all, why kill a perfectly good stock market rally and a failed Biden presidency with a bummer like a recession?  Let the gouging continue, faster and harder. 

 

The other idea tossed out this week was that the U.S. dollar would weaken as the FED paused on interest rate hikes, because of the lower core inflation number, as central banks around the globe continued to hike. Clearly, a disaster for Americans who already struggle from a failed neoliberal economy, an import driven economy, and a further assault on the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar.  A weaker dollar and a collared FED would be an asset for the stock market, the rich, and asset classes of the rich… and the repatriation of foreign profits back into U.S. dollars by multinationals.   How convenient. 

 

The powerful and the rich always have an angle.  Don’t they? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conveniently omitted from the MSM analysis were two central questions.  First, if globalization, neoliberalism, and oligarchy are the end all, be all of economics, why are Western citizens so angry and upset, why all the strikes, the contrived shortages, the manipulated supplies, the ever-spiraling greedflation?  Why? Why? Why?  The silence is deafening.  Seemingly nobody – particularly the wise boys and girls in newsrooms – has any answers.  Or perhaps the question is indiscrete… after all, why anger the billionaire owners & sponsors of newsrooms?  Why stray from the neoliberal party line, particularly when reporters are getting axed?  

 

The other question that occurred to me, what happened to the tantrums?  I seem to recall the manipulated U.S. stock market went into a swan dive anytime former FED chairs, Bernanke & Yellen, even hinted at QT (quantitative tightening) or a return to normalized interest rates.  Which, shockers, meant that the free money welfare used to transfer wealth from the taxpayer & future generations to multinationals & oligarchs, via interest rate suppression & money printing (aka QE – quantitative easing), continued relentlessly.   The FED put, meaning the stock market was too big to fail, was the order of the day.  QE and easy money (aka welfare for Wall St.) led directly to the consolidated, monopoly economy Americans face today.  You know, the monopolies that are presently ripping off Americans at an alarming rate.  And yet, this time when the FED absolutely had to hike rates, no tantrum.  In fact, the stock market soars, once again, to obscene valuations.

 

Crickets from American & Western newsrooms.  Best not turnover that rock… besides Mr. Bernanke just won a Nobel.  We can’t ask questions of a great American icon, who directly and indirectly oversaw & engineered, along with his peers, the greatest consolidation of the global economy & transfer of wealth the world has ever seen.  He saved us from a great recession, that is to say, Bernanke bailed out systemic corruption, greed, and failed neoliberalism. 

 

And we wonder why the United States and the West suffers so badly.  Americans, like the Hebrews in biblical times, have been wandering in an economic and political desert for forty-three years.  A desert of Reaganomics and failed trickle-down economics... despite the obvious failure, we cannot escape the desert’s and the pharaohs’ grasp.  Political discourse has devolved into culture wars, as Americans grow more destitute and homeless.  Bidenvilles, almost a century earlier called - Hoovervilles, dot the landscape.   

 

And the politics of greed and the great Americans swindle are everywhere.  Accountability, intellectual candor, & honesty are in very short supply.  Those who dare speak truth to power are condemned and silenced.  The American MSM has issued a de facto news blackout on the truth, and we are lost as the planet burns, so as to make the very worst of us obscenely wealthy. 

 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2023