This is a re-posting of an article on Media With Conscience about the assault on democracy by corporate interests who control governments through bribery and promises for future employment. Neoconservative neoliberalism is economic fascism. His call must be heeded or democracy will be lost, or rather, SOLD.
Sunday, 23 September 2012 08:24
A coup is underway and is near completion. It is a carefully coordinated coup against almost every nation on the planet. While national governments have been heavily influenced by financial capitalists over the past century and longer, what is happening now is blatant control of governments by a foreign installation. They are not only infesting and contaminating democratic structures, they have each and every one of us by the throat and they are starting to squeeze.
The means that are used to control you and me may not be as blatant and crude as the methods used by fascists of the 20th century; fascists like Pinochet, Mussolini, Hitler or Franco, but the control this current band of bandits have over you is probably far more personal. They are hurting you and controlling you and it will get much worse.
Financial elites are ruling societies and have not been and are not subject to elections. To the extent politicians themselves are directed by financial bodies such as Moodys of New York, the Federal Reserve, or the IMF, is the extent to which we are under the rule of financial elites. Each of these players does their bit to ensure that governments are under their control. It is they and not us that direct politicians and governments. When governments we elect work in the interests of financial elites against not only the wishes but the material circumstances of the population, the political situation can only be realistically described as oligarchy or, more accurately, plutocracy.
If it seems a little spooky that Western governments have all worked in synch over the past three decades on not only international issues, but on domestic policies as well, it should; it is. They all, suddenly and at once, identify a particular enemy as a threat to ‘national security’. They all, all at once, meet at Bilderburg. They all, all at once, agree, as if they were in the same cult, on monetary policies. In fact, they are all in the same cult.
Independence of Western European States from control of the United States no longer exists. The American government is an arm of financial elites. European states do not work against the interests of the United States. While their own financial elites control the European Central Bank, you will not see the ECB run policies contrary to the Federal Reserve. The fact is, they all in this together. (On an even more ominous note, Chinese and Russian elites are not.)
European foreign and financial policies align with their executive director in Washington. It's as if the so called Western World, including much of Latin America, is under the control of one large, unelected, international government.
The Monopolization of Europe
Throughout the so called Western world, a formula of inequality has been entrenched and forcibly enforced. Those that have been fortunate enough to live within the heart of American hegemony have lived relatively comfortable lives. The further you get from the center in class, political, or geographic directions, the more likely it is that you have experienced the brutality of financial fascism.
In Europe, there are a number of geographic divisions. First there is Germany and the Northern states. They are closest to the center of American/financial hegemony. Secondly, there are the Southern states. They are currently beginning to feel the bite of financial fascism. Then there is Eastern Europe with all its baggage from its recent communist past. They are on the bottom rung of American hegemony in Europe. Greece, by the way, almost fumbles into the latter category.
Witness the recent coups in Greece and Italy by the European Central Bank. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi was ousted by switching purchases in the bond markets on and off to enforce obedience with its directives and allowing 10-year yields to rise to 7.45 per cent. This was the last nail in his political coffin.
Whatever their methods, the European Central Bank has installed Lucas Papademos in Greece and Mario Monti in Italy to replace Italy's elected Berlusconi and Papandreou in Greece. Realistically however, politicians don't matter whether they are in Greece, Germany, or Washington. They are either simple whores or, they are gone.
Inequality between individuals, classes, and nations is an admitted necessary requirement for what our financial rulers consider a healthy business climate. Rather than lift all ships, the financial directors of the European Union demand and enforce austerity throughout the hinterland. (Please note that ‘hinterland’ refers to geographic, class, and individual distance from meetings at Bilderburg and Washington.) The medicine supplied by ECB, the Federal Reserve in the U.S. or the IMF/World Bank to those that need medicine has turned out to be poison.
Ironically, the result of this may be to reinforce and balkanize many regions throughout unified Europe as tensions between populations increase.
Increasing regional xenophobic sentiments, increasing nationalisms, increasing lateral hostilities may be encouraged by the beneficiaries of finance capitalism in order to mask the reality of horizontal class hostilities. In the 1930s, nationalist chauvinism and fascism flourished throughout Europe as economic conditions deteriorated. The current crisis has not resulted in substantial fascist movements thus far but as Germans blame the Greeks, and Greeks increasingly feel hostility toward Germans, and region blames region and they all blame immigrants, the flames of fascism will find new fuel. The European Union will crack and fracture and crumble to a climate of fear and mutual distrust. To stem this tide, a true account of and analysis of the economic collapse must be discussed and widely acknowledged. We must identify the real enemy of the people.
European nations need to fight back, to unshackle themselves from the stranglehold of monopoly capitalism. In order to do that, they need to take control of their own economic destiny.
As it is, the European Central Bank has a stranglehold on national economic sovereignty. The UK has a degree of autonomy due to its refusal to accept the Euro as its currency. That allows for greater potential to enhance local economies. They may fight the monopolies of the hegemony through increasing taxation on corporations, through devolution of wealth from the center to the regions, by implementing trade and manufacture on their own terms, and by increased emphasis on enhancement of the public commons. As it is, these things are not possible. Corporations and large finance capitalists have effectively taken control of national governments.
Under the current stage of monopoly capitalism, capitalism proper has become archaic. What has replaced it is power struggles by and between large corporate and banking interests. The notion of ‘free enterprise’ where Mom and Pop can start up a business and make it must withstand the efficiency and ruthlessness of multi-billion dollar enterprises. That is a long way of saying, free enterprise no longer exists.
Throughout the 20th century revolutions have impacted many societies. It is worth noticing that each and every revolution occurred, not where Karl Marx expected (advanced capitalist societies) but in the hinterland, in those areas that were either forgotten or abused; where parents feared for their children's availability of food and medicine. The ominous trend is that the hinterland is expanding quite rapidly as the center shrinks with the rapid concentration of capital. The middle classes are being forced out. As the class dimension of the hinterland increases, in folds into the lands that once been privileged. A black tide of suffering is enveloping the world.
You may have noticed that unlike previous capitalisms, the current configuration holds no loyalty to its local. They have sold out American and European workers with open celebration. They, the ultimate traitor, will and are exploiting and abusing citizens of all nations.
Quantitative Easing and TARP
On September 13, 2012, the Federal Reserve announced a new round of quantitative easing. This third round of printing money for banks is hard evidence that the capitalist world is in very deep trouble. Ultimately, printing money devalues the value of money. We are heading for hyperinflation. We are heading off a cliff.
Under this scheme, the Federal Reserve will buy $40 billion worth of mortgage backed securities from the banks each month in an effort to stimulate the housing market. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the initiative should “provide further support for the housing sector by encouraging home purchases and refinancing.” He said “housing is usually a big part of the recovery process” but has been “one of the missing pistons in the engine.”
Quantative Easing increases the money supply for banks but does nothing to increase the volume of money circulating on Main Street. It fuels the stock market (a grand casino). Moods, impulses, and superstition can run it up or down. But again, this does nothing for the man or woman on the street.
The Federal Reserve rationalizes this massive glorified printing of money as a means to lower interest rates for homeowners. This is the third round. It didn't work before and it won't work now.
When the housing market crashed in the United States, and the banks were in serious trouble, the banks were deemed too big to fail. They were saved by the phantom taxpayer of the future. They banks were saved and homeowners were not. Instead of stimulating Main Street, the Federal Reserve and its servile politicians saved the ultra wealthy. Instead of handing all that money directly to struggling homeowners, it was handed to the banks.
Using the banks as the directors of the economy does nothing for the economy. It only helps one class. On the other hand, the economy could be stimulated through massive public works, through providing loans to small and start up enterprises, by bailing out drowning homeowners, or through any means of actually putting money in the pockets of ordinary people. His would result in people buying goods and services and this would actually work. The spending would create many millions of jobs.
The amounts that have been provided to the wealthy classes over the past few years are inconceivable. They took the money provided through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) with no strings attached. Obama promised to help homeowners (through the Home Affordable Modification Program) but Obama is a liar and a coward. It was an illusion like so many financial shell games that have been and are currently being played.
Neil Barofsky, United States Treasury Department Inspector General and overseer of the TARP explains in his book, 'Bailout' that prior to his involvement with TARP he had no idea that the U.S. government was "captured" by the bankers. He was "shocked" at the control they have.
What he discovered was similar to what has been described above in Europe. The financial elites have tight control of the U.S. government. He aimed to publicize the rot and corruption but received no interest from the press. Instead, he was threatened and shut down. His reports were ignored or shut down.
To the extent governments are controlled by financial elites is the extent to which we effectively live under a dictatorship. The financial elites not only control governments, they control the lives of each and every one of us. What they do has a profound impact on each and every one of us.
Time to Wake Up
Austerity is being forced on Europeans and Americans and really, throughout the capitalist world. While the people suffer, the stock market booms. Their party rages on.
Additionally, pressure on local governments continues to increase and reduced spending on infrastructure is multiplying our collective misery. Physical and social infrastructures are collapsing and local governments are selling off what they own to pay bondholders. What was public property is now private. User fees for essential services will make them that own more secure and more free and they will make you and me less secure and less free.
The private sector is using the crisis to drive down wages and cut benefits to workers.
And throughout political and media opinion, the parasites and drain on society are Romney's 47%. Political and media stooges agree they are only shocked at the bluntness with which he said it. In Europe as well, social programs and spending are seen as the problem, the drain on society. It is the citizens and not the elite criminals that are at fault.
In fact, every euro or dollar those criminals own has its genesis in other people's work.
Prior to Keynes and the modern era of gentle social programs, private capitalists pushed their jackboots against the throats of citizens with unbelievable cruelty. The Company Store and the private company forced workers and citizens to buy their water, food, housing, electricity from them. ( http://peopleshistoryofcapebreton.blogspot.ca/ ) Workers were left with barely enough to survive. Examples of the depth of the misery people had to endure are well documented but have been forgotten after eight decades of Keynesianism.
Barbarism is returning. Everything that can possibly be sold will be privatized. Wherever a price can be extracted from a citizen it will be. If they can find a way to make us pay for the air we breathe, they will. And the state will back them up. They will criminalize and demonize the poor. That has already started.
Workers will work harder for less. The terms of exploitation are getting grim. To back that up, as social infrastructure crumbles, as benefits to the unemployed and the poor are more meager and jobs are more scarce, we find ourselves slipping back into the world Charles Dickens preserved in his accounts of the hardships of Victorian England.
As social problems beget social problems, our spiral to hell increases. As with any poor neighbourhood, one set of social problems exacerbates others. Concentrations of poverty where hopelessness fuels addictions problems, which increases domestic violence, which compromises child development, which causes many more social problems in the future and so on and so on, will expand from being neighbourhood problems, to whole cities to whole counties, provinces and states to whole nations. Increased homicides, suicides, crime of all sorts play off each other contributing an increasing reality of violence, insecurity, and instability.
We have become reliant on an expectation that somebody else will organize manufacturing, they will fix roads, and they will educate and feed our children. We expect politicians and 'the market' to take care of it. We are waiting for criminals, psychopaths, and cowardly political whores to take care of us in an age of barbarism.
Wake up!
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