Jan 212015
 
 January 21, 2015  Posted by at 11:16 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Harris&Ewing Goodyear Blimp at Washington Air Post ,DC 1938

In yesterday’s State of the Union, Obama said The ‘Shadow Of Crisis Has Passed’, and the one and the only thing I thought was: ‘Good, so now we can tackle the crisis itself?!’. If speeches like the SOTU last night, and the reactions to it, make anything clear, it’s that the PR guys won the fight against critical thinking. Sure, there are people for whom that shadow has passed, but a president is supposed to be there for all Americans, not just for those who finance his campaigns and those of his successors.

And for most Americans, the shadow hasn’t passed at all, and the crisis certainly hasn’t. And hollow promises to help the middle class are not going to change anything about that. It’s an elite game, and all others are left to fend for themselves. For now that remains hidden behind the veil of over 50% of Americans receiving some kind of government benefit, but that won’t last. We may have some idea of how much richer the rich are getting, and even that is a stretch, but we have much less idea of how much the poor got poorer.

And the President, of all Americans, won’t tell us, he’d rather hail his ‘achievements’ as prepared and blown out of all proportions by his spin team. His political ‘adversaries’, who play their role of ‘hating’ him only halfway convincingly, won’t call him on the spin, because they have nothing to gain from trying to blow up the newfangled American Dream.

Their message looking forward to the 2016 elections is that they would do even better, but that doesn’t sound credible with the 5% GDP growth and 5.2% unemployment numbers the White House pulls out of its top hat. They’re just as dependent on spin as Obama is, and he trumped them on it. What are they going to do? Promise 10% GDP growth?

The GOP will look to drastically cut those benefits, and they know full well that that would cut growth numbers, not raise them. 5% growth is already so far out of left field that Obama’s spin doctors have the other side cornered on US economy. They have on international politics, too.

The White House’s ludicrous stance on Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, ludicrous because none of its accusations have ever been proven over an entire year, and the sanctions that were instated because of the hollow accusations, are a hard act to follow even for John McCain and his dementing octogenarian rabble rousers who crave nothing more than for that final grand scale deadly battle in their lifetime. Can we make in nuclear plese? After them the flood.

All they could do to better Obama from here is send in American boots on the ground in the Donbass, and they know that would be the least popular decision in many decades. But domestically, economically, and internationally, it’s back to the drawing board for the Grand Old Elephants all the time, they’re always a step behind. Must be frustrating. The Obama people have played them as much as they have played the American people.

Who, as should be obvious by now, have nothing to expect from either side, since both owe allegiance not to the flag or the Founding Fathers, but to the rich getting richer who fund them, without whom they’d have to give up their power plays and -dreams. Something a certain kind of people will resist at any price. The kind that floats to the top of this kind of cesspool.

Allow money into politics and the former will end up owning the latter, no exceptions. Money won’t support candidates with a conscience, only those who’ll do anything to advance their careers, who are as pliable as and spineless as a stick of wet gum, and those are all that will be left. If anything typifies American politics, it’s moral bankruptcy. One dollar one vote. 100 million dollars, 100 million votes. And then they insist on calling that democracy, a concept promoted by the media purchased the same way the politicians are.

All you need to do is get people to believe whatever it is you got for sale. And 99.9% of people are easily fooled. That’s how you define democracy in 2015: how many people can you fool? Which is the most convincing sleight of hand?

The Europeans are well down that same road. Mario Draghi is set to announce over $1 trillion in QE tomorrow, and none of it will ever reach the alleged target, the real economy. He set up his QE in a ‘proportional’ way, meaning most of that trillion will go to Germany and France, not the Greeks and Italians who need it most.

Draghi will buy government bonds, but that doesn’t help Europe’s businesses. And not just because they are far more dependent on bank loans than American companies are, who issue more bonds, but because demand, and spending, is way down. That’s what it means that Europe is in deflation. It’s not falling prices, it’s that people don’t spend, and they certainly don’t borrow.

Draghi is engaging in the classic central banker’s ‘pushing on a string’, and Goldman’s former banker and present day acolyte knows it. He’s created a situation in which another $1 trillion looks acceptable, necessary even, to the majority of the eurozone politicians. Who mostly are clueless about the effects of such expenditures. But who look at the US and think it must have worked over there; who fall for Obama’s spin doctor narratives as much as the America people do.

Draghi’s $1 trillion has long been priced in, it won’t do anything for EU economies but gut them even further, and it may be completely irrelevant as soon as this Sunday when Greece may well elect a government that has vouched to blow up the deals the Troika made with the technocrats the EU itself installed in Athens.

Not a pretty picture, is it, either in Washington or in Brussels?! Well, I can guarantee you it’ll get a lot worse before it gets any better. We’ve let the clowns come too far. Way too far.

Home Forums We’ve Let The Clowns Come Way Too Far

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  • #18545

    Harris&Ewing Goodyear Blimp at Washington Air Post ,DC 1938 In yesterday’s State of the Union, Obama said The ‘Shadow Of Crisis Has Passed’, and the o
    [See the full post at: We’ve Let The Clowns Come Way Too Far]

    #18546
    Tulsatime
    Participant

    Pretend money spent on pretended obligations, and they pretend that, somehow, this will casue real people, with real limitations and debts, to spnd more of what they have been getting less of, for the last generation. If any real money changes hands in QE, it is from public pockets to private pockets that are already full. There is no rational path that will cause consumer stimulation from any central bank actions, yet that is what they claim to be after in the long run. A stimulus to the economy, delivered to the business sector, that depends on consumer spending, that is impoverished by central back actions. It is social suicide, or murder, take your pick.

    #18547
    Golden Oxen
    Participant

    Draghi was then vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Suchs International and a member of the firm-wide management committee (2002–2005).

    One need go no further to realize how helpful the plan will be for Europe and it’s citizens.

    Sounds like quite a party starting up for the folks from New York that do God’s Work. About a trillion Euros worth of goodies to front run and skim every month.

    #18550
    ₿oogaloo
    Participant

    With regard to the “50% of Americans receiving some kind of government benefit” — this ris eally the key to the master plan. If not for those government benefits, the situation could potentially become very volatile and get out of hand. Imagine if hungry formerly middle class people actually started marching in the streets and demanding reforms! Imagine how terrifying that would be for the ruling elite! The government benefits are designed to suppress all that. Sure conservatives hate them in theory and rail against them, but if push comes to shove, they prefer government social programs to social upheaval and revolution. They will talk about eliminating these programs, but the talk is just that — talk. They may scale them back a little bit or trim them at the margins, but these government programs are now the key to maintaining order and a clueless/dependent populace.

    #18552
    Chris M
    Participant

    Boogaloo,

    Bread, beer, and circuses, huh?

    So sinister, it actually works.

    #18553
    jonabark
    Participant

    For those of us with friends who like Obama and believe the economic news, where can we look for an effective counter to his numbers and spin? Who most effectively takes apart these claims?
    As you say,both major political sides like the basic story and seem to have some agreement on the numbers. Is the key counter-argument about the unsustainability of ever increasing debt, or more to do with how the money gets distributed/grabbed, set against the instability of the food, , ecological problems, war, banking and energy supply?
    My problem is that the message I hear from automatic earth is hard to translate with clarity to others.

    #18554
    Hotrod
    Participant

    Jonabark,

    I believe that each individual person has either some event or a string of events that finally wake them up to the farcical nature of the world as we know it. In my own little world, I sometimes wonder if it is better to be ignorant of how things really work. It is not easy questioning the conventional wisdom and there is certainly no reward for being the messenger of anti-establishment news. It gets to the point of not believing much of anything in the public realm anymore.

    One of the events that opened my eyes was the fall of the Soviet Union. I was flummoxed by the fact that in almost every former Soviet republic leader after leader simply stopped being a communist and started being a non-communist overnight. This told me that the Predator class has no ideals that guide them. Their only allegiance is to themselves and money and power. And protecting the status quo.

    IMHO this financial system, paper money backed by promises to repay at a future date, will have to run its course to oblivion and we find ourselves in its last death throes. I don’t see a way to get out of this without nasty repercussions regardless of who is in charge. Obama has been terrible, but would Willard have been any better? A man who won’t even use his given name. What an indication of the fake political world we find ourselves in.

    The reality is that there is nobody who gets anywhere in politics (even at the local level) that will tell the unvarnished truth about our present situation. Sadly, there is no place for us in the 2 party system. We are politically homeless… The rich and powerful have got this sucker locked up tight and you are just along for the ride. You, as an individual, have to protect and prepare yourself as well as you can and maybe, just maybe, you can gently enlighten some of those close to you. That’s about all you can do.

    #18555
    TheTrivium4TW
    Participant

    Hi Ilargi,
    You do everyone a grave disservice when you refer to the dElites and their operatives as “clowns.”
    That’s akin to calling Joe Stalin “Uncle Joe.”
    No, he wasn’t Uncle Joe, he was a sociopath out to do great harm to a whole lot of people who should’ve viewed him as a methodical tyrant, not a docile “uncle.”
    No, these people aren’t clowns, they are criminals who use their fraudulent debt based, zero sum monetary “game” to starve 10s of millions to death…. 30 years ago! If the oligarchs use abstract systems to murder 10s of millions annually, do those people really die if you don’t recognize the underlying structure of the operation?
    Yes.
    Stop the disservice. Call them what they are – ice cold blooded criminals out to harm average people – and the really connected ones enjoy it a whole a lot.

    #18557
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    It’s really hard to take the republicans seriously with people like Joni Ernst; did anybody listen to her infantile speech? I couln’t get past the first 2 minutes.
    But make no mistake: These people are dangerous…

    #18566
    Birdshak
    Participant

    How is bitching about the problem in any way akin to working toward its solution?

    #18567
    Golden Oxen
    Participant

    How is bitching about the problem in any way akin to working toward its solution?

    Who should we vote for, Jeb or Hillary?

    #18569
    Professorlocknload
    Participant

    The momentum of the power grab is such now that it can’t be halted. ‘Bout all we can do at this point is step aside and let it’s own lust destroy it, being as vigilant as possible in not getting any on us, through the unravelling.

    Must keep the powder dry so we may use it in building a new, improved “flawed system of governance, except for all the others.”

    Next time around, maybe the Constitution should be a bit less wordy,,,like Maybe 5 words long,,,”Congress Shall Make No Laws.”

    Heaven forbid law making should be the responsibility of the people, at the local level. What a vacuum that would leave in the ability to concentrate central power?

    Of course, an amendment mandating all currency be real, and the sole property of it’s holder, not the property of the State, might be acceptable, maybe?

    #18571
    Professorlocknload
    Participant

    Ha! Bird and Oxen,,,spot on!

    Segue to a bumper sticker I saw in a *church parking lot,,,”If God Had Intended For This To Be a Democracy, He’d Have Given Us Candidates”

    *though I don’t attend such institutions, I do use their parking facilities as a short cut on occasion.

    #18573
    Golden Oxen
    Participant

    Of course, an amendment mandating all currency be real, and the sole property of it’s holder, not the property of the State, might be acceptable, maybe?

    What a wonderful world it would then be Professor. Only banksters and their politician puppets would be unhappy at that pleasant time.

    #18576
    Birdshak
    Participant

    Choose a south facing window, and start a tray of lettuce or spinach. Bitch about banksters every day until the baby leaves are ready to eat, then eat them.

    #18578
    cloudhidden
    Participant

    @ Birdshak
    “Choose a south facing window, and start a tray of lettuce or spinach. Bitch about banksters every day until the baby leaves are ready to eat, then eat them.”

    Banksters, or spinach?

    #18579
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    @ cloudhidden

    Banksters, or spinach?
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho; nice catch. Got me a big smile…

    #18588
    Birdshak
    Participant

    Whichever goes best with a nice balsamic vinaigrette.

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