What is the best way to cook a frog? If someone wanted to, the could boil some water and toss em in like cooking a live crab or lobster and listen to them scream as they die. Perhaps a frog could jump out if there is a place for them to jump to.
The same principles can be used for economically crushing a nation and try to force 'regime change'. We try to do it with economic sanctions (and mutual agreement with our friendly nations) against 'unfriendly' countries like we did with Iraq and are doing with Iran. Those policies are a 'throw-em-in-boiling-water' method...nothing like making the civilian population suffer to try to get political change.
We're buddies with China these days but sent 50,000 of our soldiers to die in vietnam to 'fight against the spread of communism'. Isn't that strange? We are so fond of China that people are trampling each other to death to buy some crap from there. What a great country we are -snark
But what if a country's government wants to implement 'regime change' within its own borders? Usually wars are about political control, economics and greed, not political ideology per se' but they don't tell you that in school...its kind of radical to say so.
"History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and it's issuance" -- James Madison
The federal reserve are our moneychangers of today. Madison warned us about the moneychangers and I trust Madison's judgement. The federal reserve or US Treasury...not so much.
The total cost of the bailout so far is $4.6 trillion. Adjusted to todays dollar it is more than the Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, Race to the Moon, S&L crisis, the Korean War, the New Deal, Invasion of Iraq, Vietnam War, and NASA combined.
Cost of bailouts
Wow! That's a lot of money in my humble opinion. Problem is these banks are insolvent, that is a bit of problem as they are leveraged 40:1 or much, much more in derivatives and all the other baloney 'investment vehicles' they sold off to foreign investors for nice, big fat risk free profits. Lovely, these are the smartest economics people we have in the country they say. Now taxpayers are being put on a hook for a 'keep em solvent' financial scam where the toxic sludge is being sold to the American public at top dollar when, in fact, it is worth 10 to 30 cents on the dollar max.
"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery - Thomas Jefferson
All I can say about Jefferson's quote is 'free trade, deregulation and privatization'. Every change of 'ministers' has embraced this mantra for the past sixteen years minimum. It is what I call economic tyranny and it has been levied by both political parties since 1994 and NAFTA though traces back to the 60's. That's what wars are about ... economics, control and power. "Change We Need", not to offend anyone but I will nonetheless unintentially, we need this mantra changed but I don't hear it coming. But it is what we need.
Back to the boiling frogs. We are the frogs in water getting heated up slowly. That's why people trample others to death to save some money on some 'sale'. That's why foreclosures are piling up and unemployment is soaring. That's why the non-federal non-reserve is printing up dollars by the trillions to bail out bankrupt financial institutions...it gives the insiders who were too stupid to get out earlier a chance to bail.
"The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists (government bureaucrats) to use the banking system as an unlimited expansion of credit. In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation... Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation
of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process." -- Alan Greenspan (1966)
Greenspan had integrity ... in 1966. By the time this financial crisis is over, he'll be dead and he'll be glad that he is because he is going to ridiculed for his easy 'credit' policies until then, but I'm sure the lucrative speech making circuit will ease his 'pain' till that day. Easy credit is what makes bubbles and Greenspan is the biggest bubble blower in history. So far this bubble has cost the world roughly $26 trillion in losses. Hecka of a job greeny.
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered
. . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored
to the people, to whom it properly belongs."-- Thomas Jefferson
I believe you are correct Mr. Jefferson. The fear of terrorism has been drilled into the American psyche for 7 long miserable years as a grave threat because of the events of 911 which cost 3,500 lives and some buildings worth about $7 billion. Bankers and government deregulators have cost us perhaps tens of trillions and unmeasureable amounts of human suffering. But this suffering will persist for years and perhaps decades and is not easily measureable and won't be... conveniently.
Grover Norquist said something to the effect (paraphrasing) "I want to drown government in a bathtub" and bush has replied with "Mission Accomplished". Indeed, they have been successful. They are economic nihilists. It is said that Bush is trying to slip a Columbian free trade agreement in the package for the automotive industry if that comes to pass. Bush fired the director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight in 2004 for issuing a report warning of systemic crisis in the housing markets... 1 day after release of the report which was 2 years in the making.
The suspicions on some contrarian thinking investment websites are that the order came, not from the administration who only issued the order, but from the board of directors of JP Morgan bank. One of the preferred banks by the federal reserve to keep alive (clue: JP Morgan is also bankrupt holding the most derivatives contracts of all banks).
Will Obama be different? I definitely suspect yes but I don't know what he and his administration can do to change the momentum of massive debt and insolvency. The financial derivatives Death Star may appear like some esoteric abstract body floating in the outer space of the financial universe but it is a fully functioning economic death ray gun. Warren Buffet called financial derivatives 'financial weapons of mass destruction'. These things are a direct result of deregulation.
Has anybody noticed gas prices having gone down? All of the commodities had seen massive increases in prices of wheat, corn, zinc, copper, oil, etcetra during the 2006 to 2008 time frame. All the financial media spent their time trying to convince everyone that these price increases are the direct result of increased demand because of the 'float all boats' theory of globalization. Unfortunately, paying cheap labor markets subsistence level wages and exploiting economic levels between the US and developed nations with massive trade deficits isn't a sound economic theory. 17 cents an hour labor aren't going to buy cars, big screen flat panel TV's and homes with electricity, running drinkable water and proper sewage disposal any time in the next 40 years. Workers in Henry Ford's assembly plants made more money in relative terms in 1913.
The commodities bubble was created by investment money flowing out of the real estate bubble into commodities, artificially creating high commodities prices. This another 'product' of deregulation. The slave labor markets in Vietnam and other southeast asian countries loved it so much they rioted as the cost of food (rice in particular) increased so much they're families were starving. 21,000 employees walked off the job with Nike in Vietnam because they love the crap globalists keep dumping on the world with their horribly flawed and corrupt theories. I'll never look at a tennis shoe the same again until it is made in the US, once again if it ever happens again. Free trade and deregulation, ain't it wonderful?
I don't want to be a doom and gloomer but I am. The numbers are overwhelming and all of the current 'hurry up and save the system' policies are flawed, fatally. You can't solve massive debt based problems with more debt....without running the extraordinary high risk of hyperinflation. These problems have to be put into bankruptcy where they belonged in the first place. If we escape hyperinflation in the next few years, I believe we will have witnessed a financial miracle.
This is what hyperinflation looks like:
German Mark prices of Silver and Gold from January 1919 to November 1923:
Jan. 1919 Silver 12 Gold 170
May. 1919 Silver 17 Gold 267
Sept. 1919 Silver 31 Gold 499
Jan. 1920 Silver 84 Gold 1,340
May 1920 Silver 60 Gold 966
Sept. 1921 Silver 80 Gold 2,175
Jan. 1922 Silver 249 Gold 3,976
May. 1922 Silver 375 Gold 6,012
Sept. 1922 Silver 1899 Gold 30,381
Jan. 1923 Silver 23,277 Gold 372,447
May. 1923 Silver 44,397 Gold 710,355
June 5, 1923 Silver 80,953 Gold 1,295,256
July 3, 1923 Silver 207,239 Gold 3,315,831
Aug. 7, 1923 Silver 4,273,874 Gold 68,382,000
Sept. 4, 1923 Silver 16,839,937 Gold 269,429,000
Oct. 2, 1923 Silver 414,484,000 Gold 6,631,749,000
Oct. 9, 1923 Silver 1,554,309,000 Gold 24,868,950,000
Oct. 16, 1923 Silver 5,319,567,000 Gold 84,969,072,000
Oct. 23, 1923 Silver 7,253,460,000 Gold 1,160,552,662,000
Oct. 30, 1923 Silver 8,419,200,000 Gold 1,347,070,000,000
Nov. 5, 1923 Silver 54,375,000,000 Gold 8,700,000,000,000
Nov. 13, 1923 Silver 108,750,000,000 Gold 17,400,000,000,000
Nov. 30, 1923 Silver 543,750,000,000 Gold 87,000,000,000,000
I hope we don't see it but the real only hope the Obama administration has is to place most if not all the derivatives monster into receivership and make the banks laid off workers sort the crap from the good. Pension funds are wrapped up in there and people, who have worked their entire lives to try to retire comfortably, can be totally wiped out. The US pension guarantee fund can't save these things if they wanted to. I find it very hard to believe that quite a few of our democratic elected officials don't know exactly how serious the whole situation is...including Obama. I don't believe republican politicians except for a small number actually care, or are just too stupid to understand the profundity. I believe the bush administration wants it all to blow up as a farewell gift to the country.
The fundamental question I have to ask of my fellow Kossacks is why has all this deregulation, free trade and privatization stuff been driven so hard by the US government. The evidence that it doesn't work is, in my opinion, overwhelming with Argentina (2001), Iceland (2008), the UK under real emminent threat today and various other countries being cases of total financial disintegration by this stuff. I would certainly like to read your comments, theories and what not on how you view these things.
For fun I'll put up a poll (hint: no single answer is correct)