by

John Wright

A mere three weeks have gone by since I finished part two of my last article, Demise of a Cancer. Much has happened in those three weeks, including the inauguration of Barack Obama. The subjects I am most interested in, as you might guess, are the proposed actions to stem the worst of the bleeding of the economy, and especially all the ranting and raving, pro and con, about the next round of critical bank and business bailouts and the Economic Stimulus Package. The funny part, and by that I mean ironic, not really funny, is that the opinions neatly divide in half. The people who have gotten us into our present disastrous state are on one side crying for bailouts, fiscal conservatism (which is absurd if bailouts are allowed) and tax breaks, while Barack and his crew are on the other side trying to lessen the immediate destructive impact of the failed economy on the little people.

As I hear the various arguments and disagreements two essentially timeless errors stand out. The greedy "conservatives" simply want to be in control of everything of note going forward, as they have been for most of the past, with little regard for the fate of the little people, and with no regard whatever for the responsibility for the economic disaster they have created for everyone through out of control capitalism. The do good "liberals" are trying to buy time for a real fix by doing a quick but huge giveaway to keep the little people from poverty, that cannot be sustained going forward, as the value of the dollar will simply crash.

The extreme political polarity and the severity of the problems vastly exceed anything we have experienced since the last Great Depression. We are in terrible trouble as I will describe and define in this article, no matter what action or actions are taken. It is too late to avert or even to mitigate this total economic disaster. But what is this "total economic disaster?" Put succinctly, everything that we have known in good jobs and cheaply available high quality material things in the USA since WWII is in the process of ending, likely for twenty to fifty years.

In case I am not being clear I will use different words to describe our future. The USA and much of the rest of the developed world will be in total social and financial chaos within one year and very likely at total world war within two years if the stupid polarized positions of either political philosophy are maintained, here or elsewhere in the world. No single country will cause or precipitate all the bad events going forward … but all countries will participate in one or more key areas, because of mutual dependency, country to country, conflicting with local needs.

Why is this so? What exactly has happened that can’t be fixed without war? The easy answer is the current small but looming huge gap between life expectations based on the recent past vs. the current and future economic reality. Life is going downhill in a small way now but with unavoidable acceleration. Life will become ugly within the coming year for most of the people. The political pressure they will exert if they are not maintained in a respectable manner can only be fairly described as "revolutionary."

This certain knowledge is why Obama is promoting a stimulus package that he knows full well can’t be maintained. He is averting early civil unrest here and trying to buy time to figure out how to avoid or accommodate local and global disaster later. The present failure of the conservatives/republicans/out of control capitalists is in their total blindness to the fact that they will be strung up like chickens and have their throats cut if they get in the way at all of letting the little people, whose lives they have destroyed, have food, shelter, transportation, medical care, etc. Their guilt in creating the present economic disaster is so well known by so many that deceptive arguments by them no longer work.

The machinations of the Congress, the lobbyists, the spin doctors and the big businesses cannot and do not hide reality. The catch is, those in power who are presuming to get our economic problems under control are going to fail no matter what they do. It is simply a matter of a short amount of time … perhaps one year. Worse, many of the powerful are whining like crazy for bailouts to compensate their own stupid mistakes … and they give not a damn about the little people. That poor and self-serving behavior will be their undoing.

Anyone touting the conservative line will be subject to a minimum of a severe beating if/when civil unrest results from economically smashed lives. I am actually trying, in a nice way, to warn those idiots to shut up. You dumb bastards already crashed your Titanic into the iceberg, and it is going down no matter what you attempt to do in following your own "beliefs." You have in your greedy ignorance effectively killed tens of millions of others financially, and you are not in any way worthy of any respect, now or into the future. Some of you should be in jail. Others should be summarily shot. All of you must have your wealth taken from you in entirety. The only thing to do is to identify you and to try you before civil tribunals, and to punish each of you as appropriate. You are lying felons, not respectable citizens, and your present wealth means essentially nothing, for you will lose all of it along with your power and your freedom, and in some instances your life.

I suppose the above paragraph sounds rather harsh. It is, but how many of you readers have any feel at all for the property destruction, general mayhem and killing that will occur all over the USA if civil unrest is not averted? Do you know of any valid arguments to place the blame for the economic disaster on the little people? Shall we lay responsibility for disaster at the feet of the weak or the strong? Who made the laws and the business rules? Who made the bad loans? Who did the bad bundling and investing? Who offshored the jobs? Who allowed the ignorant to acquire too much debt? Who immensely complicated the economic life of the USA and other countries by promoting and executing globalization? The criminal collusion between government, corporations and financial institutions, at the expense of the little people in many countries, is the entire reason for all of the current problems, period. Now, the only issues of relevance are whether we can hold our country together and destroy the collusion environment/punish the perpetrators.

I wish I could be more optimistic, but even my presently secure retirement income will be decimated by the collapse of the dollar. I will have no recourse then, nor do I now, to protect that due to me as income in the future. My former employer showed no interest in keeping retirees current with inflation during the good times. Is there any reason to assume they will become considerate and responsible during the bad times? Is it not clear that the only way anyone can be protected from the future collapse of the dollar is to have liquid assets now that will be converted, perhaps quickly, to stable foreign currency or to precious metals or to some other investment whose value will track inflation? Earnings dependent on past job retirement programs or entitlement programs and earnings from future work are all entirely vulnerable.

Lest I forget, it is appropriate to take a good look at our marvelous stock market. I have been tracking major indices and certain segments for quite a few months/years, and I have especially enjoyed watching the recent intra-day graphs of market movement. What a hoot! We have long suspected total manipulation but the recent behaviors are underpinned by such obviously kindergarten types of controls as to give me a hernia or a popped blood vessel from laughing. How could anyone with an IQ higher than 10 be fooled by these bounded market movements?

To be blunt, artificial stock market supports are obviously executed to keep the market from going into freefall, which at the present time could result in a Dow Industrials composite of somewhere between 5000 and 6000. That would spell disaster for too many companies. Why? Because it should. They are far overextended. And lets not forget the downtrodden wealthy who have taken a bath in the market … we can’t allow them to suffer now, can we? Okay, I sense when my cynicism is slipping out of control so I will cool my jets.

Ah, a reality booster shot. I provided it so that you wouldn’t become infected with the latest round of bullshit about bailouts and stimulus measures. They won’t work because there is no quick or easy way to eliminate massive personal debt in a bad job market … so the creditors have to fail … etc. I wonder why we keep lying and pretending that this beast can be managed?